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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



THE WAY OF THE WILD 



THE WAY 
OF THE WILD 



BY 



F. ST. MARS 




NEW YORK 

FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 






COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 
PUBLISHED IN ENGLAND DNDKR THK TITLE "PINION" ASH PAW 1 



AIL RIGHTS RESERVED 



uho 17 1919 



A 561045 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I Gulo the Indomitable 1 

II Blackie and Co 27 

III Under the Yellow Flag 42 

IV Nine Points of the Law 62 

V Pharaoh 79 

VI The Cripple 96 

VII " Set a Thief "— 116 

VIII The Where Is It? 129 

IX Lawless Little Love 145 

X The King's Son 162 

XI The Highwayman of the Marsh . . .172 

XII The Furtive Feud 193 

XIII The Storm Pirate 206 

XIV When Nights Were Cold 226 

XV Fate and the Fearful 240 

XVI The Eagles of Loch Royal .... 258 

XVII Ratel, V.C 278 

XVIII The Day 298 



THE WAY OF THE WILD 

i 

GULO THE INDOMITABLE 

If his father had been a brown bear and his mother a 
badger, the result in outward appearance would have 
been Gulo, or something very much like him. But not 
all the crossing in the world could have accounted for 
his character ; that came straight from the Devil, his 
master. Gulo, however, was not a cross. He was him- 
self, Gulo, the wolverine, alias glutton, alias carcajou, 
alias quick-hatch, alias fjeldfras in the vernacular, or, 
officially, Gulo luscus. But, by whatever name you 
called him, he did not smell sweet ; and his character, 
too, was of a bad odor. A great man once said that 
he was like a bear cub with a superadded tail ; but that 
great man cannot have seen his face. If he had, he 
would have looked for his double among the fiends on 
the top of Notre Dame. There was, in fact, nothing 
like him on this earth, only in a very hot place not on 
the earth. 

He was, in short, a beast with brains that only man, 
and no beast, ought to be trusted with; and he had no 
soul. God alone knows if love, which softens most 
creatures, had ever come to Gulo ; his behavior seemed 

i 



2 GULO THE INDOMITABLE 

to show that it had not. Perhaps love was afraid of 
him. And, upon my soul, I don't wonder. 

It was not, however, a hot, but a very cold, place in 
the pine-forest where Gulo stood, and the unpitying 
moon cast a dainty tracery through the tasseled roof 
upon the new and glistening snow around him — the 
snow that comes early to those parts — and the north- 
east wind cut like several razors. But Gulo did not 
seem to care. Wrapped up in his ragged, long, untidy, 
uncleanly-looking, brown-black cloak — just his gray- 
sided, black fiend's face poking out — he seemed warm 
enough. When he lifted one paw to scratch, one saw 
that the murderous, scraping, long claws of him were 
nearly white ; and as he set his lips in a devilish grin, 
his fangs glistened white in the moonlight, too. 

Verily, this was no beast — he would have taped four 
feet and a quarter from tip to tip, if you had worn 
chain-mail and dared to measure him — no beast, I say, 
to handle with white-kid ball gloves. Things were 
possible from him, one felt, that were not possible of 
any other living creature — awful things. 

Suddenly he looked up. The branches above him 
had stirred uneasily, as if an army were asleep there. 
And an army was — of wood-pigeons. Thousands 
upon thousands of wood-pigeons were asleep above his 
head, come from Heaven knows where, going to — who 
could tell in the end? 

All at once one fell. Without apparent reason or 
cause, it fell. And the wolverine, with his quick, intelli- 
gent eyes, watched it fall, from branch to branch, turn- 
ing over and over — oh ! so softly — to the ground. 
When he had poked his way to it — walking flat-footed, 
like a bear or a railway porter — it was dead. Slain 



GULO THE INDOiMITABLE 3 

in a breath! Without a flutter, killed! By what? 
By disease — diphtheria. But not here would the 
terrible drama be worked out. This was but an isolated 
victim, first of the thousands that would presently 
succumb to the fell disease far, far over there, to the 
westward, hundreds of miles away, in England and 
Wales, perhaps, whither they were probably bound. 

But the poor starved corpse, choked to death in the 
end maybe, was of no use to the wolverine. As he 
sniffed it he found that out. The thing was wasted to 
the bones even. And turning away from it — he sud- 
denly " froze " in his tracks where he stood. 

One of those little wandering eddies which seem to 
meander about a forest in an aimless sort of way, 
coming from and going now hither, as if the breeze 
itself were lost among the still aisles, had touched his 
wet muzzle ; and its touch spelt — " Man ! " 

If it had been the taint of ten thousand deaths it 
could not have affected him more. He became a beast 
cast in old, old bronze, and as hard as bronze ; and 
when he moved, it was stiffly, and all bristly, and on end. 

Animals have no counting of time. In the wild, 
things happen as swiftly as a flash of light ; or, perhaps, 
nothing happens at all for a night, or a day, or half a 
week. Therefore I do not know exactly how long that 
wolverine was encircling that scent, and pinning it down 
to a certain spot — himself unseen. All animals, al- 
most, can do that, but none, not even the lynx or the 
wild cat, so well as the wolverine. He is the one mam- 
mal that, in the wild, is a name only — a name to con- 
jure with. 

He found, in the end, that there was no man; but 
there had been. He found — showing himself again 



4 GULO THE INDOMITABLE 

now — that a man — a hunter, a trapper, one after fur 
— had made himself here a cache, a store under the 
earth ; and — well, the wolverine's great, bear-like claws 
seemed made for digging. 

He dug — and, be sure, if there had been any danger 
there he would have known it. He dug like a North- 
Country miner, with swiftness and precision, stopping 
every now and again to sit back on his haunches, and, 
with humped shoulders, stare — scowl, I mean — round 
in his lowering, low-browed fashion. 

Once a bull-elk, nearly a six-footer, but he loomed 
large as an elephant, came clacking past between the 
ranked tree-boles, stopping a moment to straddle a sap- 
ling and browse ; while the wolverine, sitting motionless 
and wide-legged, watched him. Once a lynx, with its 
eternal, set grin, floated by, half-seen, half-guessed, as 
if a wisp of wood mist had broken loose and was floating 
about. Once a fox, somewhere in the utter silence of 
the forest depths, barked a hoarse, sharp, malicious 
sound; and once, hoarser still and very hollowly, a 
great horned owl hooted with disconcerting suddenness. 
(The scream of a rabbit followed these two, but whether 
fox or owl had been in at that killing the wolverine 
never knew.) Twice a wood-hare turning now to 
match the whiteness of its surroundings, finickcd up 
one of the still, silent forest lanes towards him, stopped, 
faced half-round, sat " frozen " for a fraction, and 
vanished as if it were a puff of wind-caught snow. 
(And, really, one had no idea till now that the always 
apparently lifeless forest could have been so full of life 
in the dark hours.) 

But all these things made no difference to the wol- 
verine, to Gulo, though he " froze " with habitual care 



GULO THE INDOMITABLE 5 

to watch them — for your wild creature rarely takes 
chances. Details must never be overlooked in the wild. 
He dug on, and in digging came right to the cache, 
roofed and anchored all down, safe beyond any invasion, 
with tree-trunks. And — and, mark you, not being 
able to pull tree-trunks out of the ground, and being 
too large to squeeze between them, he gnawed through 
one! Gnawed through it, he did, and came down to 
the bazaar below. 

So far, he had been only beast. Now we see why I 
said he had more brains than were good for any animal 
except man. 

He bit through the canvas, or whatever it was that 
protected the cached articles. He got his head inside. 
He felt about purposefully, and backed out, dragging 
a trap with him. With it he removed into the inky 
shadows, and it was never found again. 

He returned. He thrust his head in a second time, 
got hold of something, and backed out. It was another 
trap, and with it he vanished also ; and it, too, was 
never found. He returned, and went, and a third trap 
went with him. 

The fourth investigation revealed an ax. It he 
partly buried. The fifth yielded a bag of flour, which 
he tore up and scattered all over the place. The sixth 
inroad produced a haunch of venison, off which he 
dined. The seventh showed another haunch, and this 
he buried somewhere unseen in the shades. The eighth 
overhaul gave up some rope, in which he nearly got 
himself entangled, and which he finally carried away, 
bitten and frayed past use. The ninth search rewarded 
him with tea, which he scattered, and bacon, which he 
buried. 



6 GULO THE INDOMITABLE 

What he could not drag out, he scattered. What he 
failed to remove, he defiled. And, at last, when he had 
made of the place, not an orderly cache, but a third-rate 
debacle, he sauntered, always slouching, always grossly 
untidy, hump-backed, stooping, low-headed, and droop- 
tailed, shabbily unrespectable, out into the night, and 
the darkness of the night, under the trees. 

By the time day dawned he was as if he never had 
been — a memory, no more. Heaven knows where he 
was ! 

Gulo appeared quite suddenly and very early, for 
him, next afternoon, beside some tangled brush on the 
edge of a clearing. He was sitting up, almost bolt- 
upright, and he was shading his e} T es with his forepaws. 
A man could not have done more. And, in fact, he 
did not look like an animal at all, but like some dia- 
bolically uncouth dwarf of the woods. 

A squirrel was telling him, from a branch near by, 
just what everybody thought of his disgraceful appear- 
ance ; and two willow-grouse were clucking at him from 
some hazel-tops ; whilst a raven, black as coal against 
the white of the woods, jabbed in gruff and very rude 
remarks from time to time. 

But Gulo was taking no notice of them. He was 
used to attentions of that kind ; it was a little compli- 
ment — of hate — they all paid him. He was looking 
persistently down the ranked, narrowing perspective of 
the buttressed forest glade to where it faded in the 
blue-gray mist, southward, as if he expected something 
to come from there. Something was coming from there 
now ; and there had been a faint, uneasy sort of whisper 
in that direction for some time. Now it was un- 
mistakable. 



GULO THE INDOMITABLE 7 

A cow-elk, first of the wary ones to move on alarm, 
came trotting by, her Roman nose held well out ; a red- 
deer hind, galloping lightly like some gigantic hare, her 
big ears turned astern; a wolf, head up, hackles alift, 
alternately loping and pivoting, to listen and look back ; 
a wild reindeer, trotting heavily, but far more quickly 
than he seemed to be — all these passed, now on one 
side, now on the other, often only glimpses between the 
tree-boles, while the w r olverine sat up and shaded his 
eyes with his paws. Something was moving those 
beasts, those haunters of the forest, and no little thing 
either. Something? What? 

Very softly down the glade runs a waiting, watching shade, 
And the whisper spreads and widens far and near; 

And the sweat is on thy brow, for he passes even now — 
He is Fear, O Little Hunter, he is Fear. 

Down came Gulo in that grim silence which was, 
except for his domestic arguments, characteristic of the 
beast, and trotted to a pool hard by. The pool was 
spring-fed, and covered, as to every dead leaf and 
stone, with fine green moss of incomparable softness. 
He drank swiftly and long, then flung about with a 
half-insolent, half-aggressive wave of his tail, and set 
off at a rolling, clumsy, shuffling shamble. 

At ordinary times that deceiving gait would have 
left nearly everything behind, but this afternoon it was 
different. Gulo had barely shed the shelter of the 
dotted thickets before he realized, and one saw, the 
fact. He broke his trot. He began to plunge. 
Nevertheless, he got along. There was pace, of a 
sort. Certainly there was much effort. He would 
have outdistanced you or me easily in no time, but it 



8 GULO THE INDOMITABLE 

was not you or I that came, and who could tell how 
fast that something might travel? 

The trouble was the snow — that was the rub, and a 
very big and serious rub, too, for him. Now, if the 
snow had been a little less it would not have mattered 
— a little more, and he could have run easily along the 
hard crust of it; but it was as it was, only about two 
feet, just enough to retard him, and no more. And it 
is then, when the snow is like that, just above a couple 
of feet deep, that man can overtake friend wolverine — 
if he knows the way. Most men don't. On that he 
trusted. At any other time — but this was not any 
other time. 

Sound carries a long way in those still parts, and as 
he hurried Gulo heard, far, far behind in the forest, the 
faint, distant whir of a cock-capercailzie — the feath- 
ered giant of the woods — rising. It was only a 
whisper, almost indistinguishable to our ears, but 
enough, quite enough, for him. Taken in conjunction 
with the mysterious shifting of the elk and the red 
deer and the reindeer and the w 7 olf, it was more than 
enough. He increased his pace, and for the first time 
fear shone in his eyes — it was for the first time, too, 
in his life, I think. 

A lynx passed him, bounding along on enormous, 
furry legs. It looked all legs, and as it turned its 
grinning countenance to look at him he cursed it 
fluently, with a sudden savage growl, envious, perhaps, 
of its long, springing hindlegs. Something, too — the 
same something — must have moved the lynx, and Gulo 
shifted the faster for the knowledge. 

Half-an-hour passed, an hour slid by, and all the 
time Gulo kicked the miles behind him, with that dogged 



GULO THE INDOMITABLE 9 

persistency that was part of his character. Nothing 
had passed him for quite a while, and he was all alone 
in the utterly still, silent forest and the snow, pad- 
pad-padding along like a moving, squat machine rather 
than a beast. 

At last he stopped, and, spinning round, sat up. A 
gray-blue haze, like the color on a wood-pigeon, was 
creeping over everything, except in the west, where the 
sky held a faint, luminous, pinky tinge that foretold 
frost. It was very cold, and the snow, which had 
never quite left off, was falling now only in single, big, 
wandering flakes. The silence was almost terrifying. 

Then, as Gulo sat up, from far away, but not quite so 
far away, his rounded ears, almost buried in fur, caught 
faintly — very, very faintly — a sound that brought 
him down on all fours, and sent him away again at a 
gallop with a strange new light burning in his little, 
wide-set eyes. It was the unmistakable sound of a 
horse sneezing — once. Gulo did not wait to hear if it 
sneezed twice. He was gone in an instant. Man, it 
seemed, had not been long in answering that challenge 
of the cache escapade. 

After that there was no such thing as time at all, only 
an everlasting succession of iron-hard tree-trunks slid- 
ing by, and shadows — they ran when they saw him, 
some of them, or gathered to stare with eyes that glinted 
— dancing past. The moon came and hung itself up 
in the heavens, mocking him with a pitiless, stark glare. 
(He would have given his right forepaw for a black 
night and a blinding snowstorm.) It almost seemed as 
if they were all laughing at him, Gulo the dreaded, the 
hated hater, because it was his turn at last, who had so 
freely dealt in it, to know fear. 



io GULO THE INDOMITABLE 

Hours passed certainly, hours upon hours, and still, 
his breath coming quickly and less easily now with every 
mile, Gulo stuck to the job of putting the landscape 
behind him with that grim pertinacity of his that was 
almost fine. 

At last the trees stopped abruptly, and he was head- 
ing, straighter than crows fl} T , across a plain. The 
plain undulated a little, like a sea, a dead sea, of spotless 
white, with nothing alive upon it — only his hunched, 
slouching, untidy, squat form and his shadow, 
" pacing " him. At the top of the highest undulation 
he stopped, and glowered back along the trail. 

Ahead, the forest, starting again, showed as a black 
band a quarter of an inch high. Behind, the forest he 
had already left lay dwarfed in a ruled, serried line. 
But that was not all. Something was moving out upon 
the spotless plain of snow, something which appeared 
to be no more than crawling, ant-like, but was really 
traveling very fast. It looked like a smudged dot, 
nothing more ; but it was a horse, really, galloping hard, 
with a light sleigh, and a man in it, behind. The horse 
had no bells, and it was not a reindeer as usual. Pace 
was wanted here, and the snow was not deep enough to 
impede the horse, who possessed the required speed 
under such conditions. 

The horse had been trotting along the trail, till it 
came to the place where Gulo had looked back and heard 
the sneeze, and knew he was being followed. Then it 
had started to gallop, and, with ears back and teeth 
showing, had never ceased to gallop. This, apparently, 
was not the first wolverine that horse had trailed. It 
seemed to have a personal grudge against the whole 



GULO THE INDOMITABLE 11 

fell clan of wolverine, and to be bent upon trampling 
Gulo to death. 

Gulo watched it for about one quarter of a second. 
Then he quitted, and the speed he had put up previously 
was nothing to that which he showed now — uselessly. 
And, far behind him, the man in the sleigh drew out his 
rifle from under the fur rugs. He judged that the time 
had about come. The end was very near. 

But he judged wrong. Gulo made the wood at 
length. With eyes of dull red, and breath coming in 
short, rending sobs, he got in among the trees. He did 
it, though the feat seemed impossible, for the trees had 
been so very far away. Got in among the trees — yes, 
but dead-beat, and — to what end? To be "treed" 
ignominiously and calmly shot down, picked off like a 
squirrel on a larch-pole. That was all. And that was 
the orthodox end, the end the man took for granted. 

In a few minutes the horse was in the forest too, was 
close behind Gulo. In spite of the muffling effect of 
snow, his expectant ears could hear the quadruple thud 
of the galloping hoofs, and — 

Hup ! Whuff ! Biff -biff ! Grrrrrr ! Grr-ur-ururrh ! 
Grrrr-urr t 

It had all happened quick as a flash of light. A huge, 
furry, reeking mass rising right in the wolverine's path 
from behind a tree, towering over him, almost moun- 
tainous to his eyes, like the very shape of doom ! Him- 
self hurling sideways, and rolling over and over, 
snarling, to prevent the crowning disaster of collision 
with this terrible portent ! A blow, two blows, with 
enormous paws whose claws gleamed like skewers, 
whistling half-an-inch above his ducked head! Jaws, 



12 GULO THE INDOMITABLE 

monstrous and wet, grabbing at him in enraged con- 
fusion, and rumblings deep down in the inside of the 
thing that ran cold lightning-sparks all up his spine. 
That was what Gulo saw and heard. 

The wolverine rolled, clawing and biting, three times, 
and without a pause sprang to his feet again, and leapt 
madly clear, stumbled on a hidden tree-root, rolled over 
again twice, and up, and hurled, literally with his last 
gasp and effort, headlong through the air behind a tree- 
bole, where he remained all asprawl and motionless, 
except for his heaving sides, too utterly done at last for 
any terror to move him. 

There followed instantly a horse's wild snort; an- 
other; a shout; the crack of a rifle cutting the silence 
as a knife cuts a taut string ; another crack ; an awful, 
hoarse growl; the furious thudding of horse's hoofs 
stampeding and growing fainter and fainter ; and an 
appalling series of receding, short, coughing, terrify- 
ing, grunting roars. Then silence and utter stillness 
only, and the cold, calm moon staring down over all. 

Gulo picked himself up after a bit, and slouched 
round the tree to investigate. He found tracks there, 
and blood; and the tracks were the biggest footprints 
of a bear — a brown bear — that he had ever come 
across, and I suppose that he must have sniffed at a 
few in his time. 

Presumably the man had fired at the bear when the 
startled horse shied. Presumably, too, the bear was 
hit. He had gone straight away in the track of horse 
and man, anyway, and — he had saved the wolverine's 
life, after, with paw and teeth, doing his best to end it. 
Possibly he had been disturbed in the process of making 
his winter home. 



GULO THE INDOMITABLE 13 

Gulo lay low, or hunted very furtively, after that for 
some time, until it was little less dark in the east than 
it had been, and the gaunt tree-trunks were standing 
out a fraction from the general gloom. The moon had 
apparently nearly burnt itself out. Still, it yet ap- 
peared to be night. 

Gulo was a long way out of his own hunting-district, 
and guessed that it was about time for him to get him- 
self out of sight. He had a passionate hatred of the 
day, by the way, even beyond most night hunters. 

On the way he smelt out and dug up a grouse be- 
neath the snow. 

Dawn found him, or, rather, failed to find him, hidden 
under a tangled mass that was part windfall, part brush- 
wood, and part snow. The place had belonged to a fox 
the night before, and that red worthy returned soon 
after dawn. He thrust an inquiring sharp muzzle in- 
side, took one sniff, and, with every hair alift, retired 
in haste, without waiting to hear the villainous growl 
that followed him. The smell was enough for him — a 
most calamitous stink. 

It snowed all that day, and things grew quieter and 
quieter, except in the tree-tops, where the wind spoke 
viciously between its teeth. When Gulo came out that 
evening, he had to dig part of the way, and he viewed a 
still and silent, white world, under a sky like the lid of 
a lead box, very low down. He stood higher against 
the tree-trunks than he had done the night before, and, 
though he did not know it, was safe from any horse, for 
the snow was quite deep. The cold was awful, but it 
did not seem to trouble him, as he slouched slowly 
southward. 

There appeared to be nothing alive at all throughout 



14 GULO THE INDOMITABLE 

this white land, but you must never trust to that in the 
wild. Things there are very rarely what they seem. 
For instance, Gulo came into a clearing, dim under the 
night sky, though it would never be dark that night. 
To the ear and the eye that clearing was as empty as a 
swept room. To Gulo's nose it was not, and he was 
just about to crouch and execute a stalk, when half 
the snow seemed to get up and run awa}^. The runners 
were wood-hares. They had " frozen " stiff on the 
alarm from their sentries. But it was not Gulo who 
had caused them to depart. Him, behind a tree, they 
had not spotted. Something remained — something 
that moved. And Gulo saw it when it moved — not 
before. It was an ermine, a stoat in winter dress, white 
as driven snow. Then it caught sight of Gulo, or, more 
likely, the gleam of his eyes, and departed also. 

Gulo slouched on, head down, back humped, tail low, 
a most dejected-looking, out-at-heels tramp of the 
wilderness. 

Once he came upon a wild cat laying scientific siege 
to a party of grouse. The grouse were nowhere to be 
seen ; nor was the wild cat, after Gulo announced his 
intention to break his neutrality. Gulo knew where the 
grouse were. He dug down into the snow, and came 
upon a tunnel. He dug farther, and came upon other 
tunnels, round and clean, in the snow. All the tunnels 
smelt of grouse, but devil a grouse could he find. He 
had come a bit early. It was as yet barely night, and 
he should have waited till later, when they would be 
more asleep. However, he dug on along the tunnels, 
driving the grouse before him. And then a strange 
thing happened. About three yards ahead of him the 
snow burst — burst, I say, like a six-inch shell, up- 



GULO THE INDOMITABLE 15 

wards. There was a terrific commotion, a wild, whir- 
ring, whirling smother, a cloud of white, and away 
went five birds, upon heavity beating wings, into the 
gathering gloom. Gulo went away, too, growling deep 
down inside of, and to, himself. 

He was hungry, was Gulo. Indeed, there did not 
seem to be many times when he was not hungry. Also, 
being angry — not even a wild animal likes failure — 
he was seeking a sacrifice ; but he had crossed the plain, 
which the night before had been as a nightmare desert 
to him, and the moon was up before his chance came. 

He crossed the trail of the reindeer. He did not 
know anything about those reindeer, mark you, whether 
they were wild or semi-tame ; and / do not know, though 
he may have done, how old the trail was. It was suffi- 
cient for him that they were reindeer, and that they had 
traveled in the general direction that he w T anted to go. 
For the rest — he had the patience, perhaps more than 
the patience, of a cat, the determination of a bulldog, 
and the nose of a bloodhound. He trailed those rein- 
deer the better part of that night, and most of the time 
it snowed, and part of the time it snowed hard. 

By the time a pale, frozen dawn crept weakly over 
the forest tree-tops Gulo must have been well up on the 
trail of that herd, and he had certainly traveled an 
astonishing way. He had dug up one lemming — a 
sort of square-ended relation of the rat, with an abbre- 
viated tail — and pounced upon one pigmy owl, scarce 
as large as a thrush, which he did not seem to relish 
much — perhaps owl is an acquired taste — before he 
turned a wild cat out of its lair — to the accompani- 
ment of a whole young riot of spitting and swearing — 
and curled up for the day. 



16 GULO THE INDOMITABLE 

He was hungry when he went to sleep. Also, it was 
snowing then. When he woke up it was almost dark, 
and snowing worse than ever. If it could have been 
colder, it was. 

While he cleaned himself Gulo took stock of the 
outside prospect, so far as the white curtain allowed to 
sight, and by scent a good deal that it did not. This 
without appearing outside the den, you understand. 
And if there had been any enemy in hiding, waiting for 
him outside, he would have discovered the fact then. 
He had many enemies, and no friends, had Gulo. All 
that he received from all whom he met was hate, but he 
gave back more than he got. In the lucid terms of the 
vernacular, he " was a hard un, if you like." 

Nothing and nobody saw the wolverine leave that lair 
that was not his. He must have chosen one blinding 
squall of snow for the purpose, and was half a mile 
away, still on the track of the reindeer, before he showed 
himself — shuffling along as usual, a ragged, hard- 
bitten ruffian. And three hours later he came up with 
his prey. 

Gulo knew it, but nobody else could have done. 
There were just the straight trees ahead, and all around 
the eternal white, frozen silence, and the snow falling 
softly over everything; but Gulo was as certain that 
there was the herd close ahead as he was that he was 
ravenous. And thereafter Gulo got to work, the 
peculiar work, a special devilish genius for which ap- 
pears to be given to the wolverine. 

He ceased to exist. At least, nothing of him was 
seen, not a tail, not an eye-gleam. Yet during the next 
two hours he learnt everything, private and public, 
there was to be learnt. Also, he had been over the sur- 



GULO THE INDOMITABLE 17 

roundings almost to a yard. Nothing could have es- 
caped him. No detail of risk and danger, of the chance 
of being seen even, had been overlooked; for he was a 
master at his craft, the greatest master in the wild, per- 
haps. The wolf? My dear sirs, the wolf was an inno- 
cent suckling cub beside Gulo, look you, and his brain 
and his cunning were not the brain and the cunning of 
a beast at all, but of a devil. 

When, after a very long time, he reappeared upon 
his original track, it was as a dark blotch, indistinguish- 
able from a dozen other dark blots of moon-shadow, 
creeping forward belly-flat in the snow. This belly- 
creep, hugging always every available inch of cover, he 
kept up till he came to a big clearing, and — there were 
the reindeer. At least, there was one reindeer, a doe, 
standing with her back towards him — a quite young 
doe. The rest were half-hidden in the snow, which they 
had trampled into a maze of paths in and out about the 
clearing, which was, in fact, what is called their 
" yard." 

A minute of tense silence followed after Gulo had got 
as close as he could without being seen. Then he rushed. 
The reindeer swung half-round, gave one snort, and 
a great bound. But Gulo had covered half the inter- 
vening space before she knew, and when she bounded it 
was with him hanging on to her. 

Followed instantly a wild upspringing of snorting 
beasts, and a mad, senseless stampede of floundering 
deer all round and about the clearing — a fearful mix- 
up, somewhere in the midst of which, half-hidden by fly- 
ing, finely powdered snow, Gulo did his prey horribly 
to death. 

There was something ghastly about this murder, for 



18 GULO THE INDOMITABLE 

the deer was so big, and Gulo comparatively small. 
The fearful work of his jaws and his immense strength 
seemed wrong somehow, and out of all proportion to 
his size. This remarkable power of his jaws had that 
sinister disproportion only paralleled by the power of 
the jaws of a hyena ; indeed, his teeth very much re- 
sembled a hyena's teeth. 

With the deer rushing all around him, Gulo fed, rav- 
enously and horribly, but not for long. A new light 
smoldered in his eyes now as he lifted his carmine snout, 
and one saw that, for the moment, the beast was mad, 
crazed with the lust of killing, seeing red, and blinded 
by blood. 

Then the massacre began. It was not a hunt, be- 
cause each deer, thinking only of itself, feared to break 
from the trodden mazy path of the " yard," and risk 
the slow, helpless, plunging progress necessary in the 
deep snow. Wherefore panic took them all over again, 
and they dashed, often colliding, generally hindering 
each other, hither and thither, up and down the paths 
of the " yard " with the hopeless, helpless, senseless, 
blind abandon of sheep. The result was a shambles. 

This part we skip. Probably — nay, certainly — 
Nature knows best, and is quite well aware what she is 
up to, and it is perhaps not meant that we should put 
her in the limelight in her grisly moods. Suffice it to 
say that Gulo seemed to stop at length, simply because 
even he could not " see red " forever, and with exhaus- 
tion returned sense, and with sense — in his case — in- 
born caution. He removed, leaving a certain number 
of reindeer bleeding upon the ground. Some of them 
were dead. 

In an hour dawn would be conspiring to show him up 



GULO THE INDOMITABLE 19 

before the world, and he was not a beast sweet to look 
upon at that moment — indeed, at any moment, but 
less so now. 

Now, it is surprising how far a wolverine can shift his 
clumsy-looking body over snow in an hour, especially if 
he has reasons. This one had good reasons, and he 
was no fool. He knew quite well the kind of little hell 
he had made for himself behind there, and he did not 
stay to let the snow cover him. He traveled as if he 
were a machine and knew no fatigue ; and the end of that 
journey was a hole in a hollow among rocks. 

Dawn was throwing a wan light upon all things when 
he thrust his short, sharp muzzle inside that hole, to 
be met by a positively hair-raising volley of rasping, 
vicious growls. 

He promptly ripped out a string of ferocious, dry, 
harsh growls in return, and for half-a-minute the air 
became full of growls, horrible and blood-curdling, each 
answering each. 

Then he lurched in over the threshold, and coolly 
dodged a thick paw, with tearing white claws, that 
whipped at him with a round-arm stroke out of the 
pitch-darkness. The stroke was repeated, scraping, 
but in nowise hurting his matted coat, as he rose on his 
hindlegs and threw himself upon the striker. 

Followed a hectic thirty seconds of simply diabolical 
noises, while the two rolled upon the ground, grappling 
fiendishly in the darkness. Then they parted, got up, 
growled one final roll of fury at each other, fang to 
fang, and, curling up, went to sleep. But it was noth- 
ing, only the quite usual greeting between Gulo and 
his wife. They w T ere a sweet couple. 

There appeared to be no movement, or any least sign 



20 GULO THE INDOMITABLE 

of awakening, on the part of either of the couple be- 
tween that moment and sometime in the afternoon, 
when, so far as one could see, Gulo suddenly rolled 
straight from deep sleep out on to the snow, and away 
without a sound, at his indescribable shamble and at 
top speed. 

Mrs. Gulo executed precisely the same amazing ma- 
neuver, and at exactly the same moment, as far as could 
be seen, on the other side, and shuffled off into the for- 
est. They gave no explanation for so doing. They 
said never a word — nothing. One moment they were 
curled up, asleep ; the next they had gone, scampered, 
apparently into the land of the spirits, and were no 
more. Nor did there seem to be any reason for this 
extraordinary conduct except — except — Well, it is 
true that a willow-grouse, white as the snowy branch he 
sat upon, did start clucking somewhere in the dim tree 
regiments, a snipe did come whistling sadly over the 
tree-tops, and a raven, jet against the white, did flap 
up, barking sharply, above the pointed pine-tops ; but 
that was nothing — to us. To the wolverines it was 
everything, a whole wireless message in the universal 
code of the wild, and they had read it in their sleep. 
Through their slumbers it had spelt into their brains, 
and instantly snapped into action that wonderful, fault- 
less machinery that moved them to speed as if auto- 
matically. 

Then the chase began, grim, steady, relentless, 
dogged — the chase of death, the battle of endurance. 

A pause followed after the vanishing of the hated 
wolverines. A crow lifted on rounded vans, marking 
their departure, and it was seen. A blackcock launched 



GULO THE INDOMITABLE 21 

from a high tree with a whir and a bluster like an aero- 
plane, showing their course, and it was noted. An 
eagle climbed heavily and ponderously over the low cur- 
tain of the snow mist, pointing their way, and it was 
followed. All the wild, all the world, seemed to be 
against the wolverines. The brigands were afoot by 
day. The scouts were marking their trail. 

Then a lynx, moving with great bounds on his huge 
swathed paws, shot past between the iron-hard tree- 
boles ; a fox followed, scudding like the wind on the 
frozen crest ; a hare, white as a waste wraith, flashed 
by, swift as a racing white cloud-shadow; a goshawk 
screamed, and drew a straight streaking line across a 
glade. And then came the men, side by side, deadly 
dumb, with set faces, the pale sun glinting coldly cruel 
upon the snaky, lean barrels of their slung rifles, mov- 
ing with steady, fleet, giant strides on their immense 
spidery ski that were eleven feet long, which whispered 
ghostily among the silent aisles of Nature's cathedral 
of a thousand columns. The Brothers were on the 
death-trail of Gulo at last ; the terrible, dreaded Broth- 
ers, who could overtake a full-grown wolf in under 
thirty minutes on ski, and whose single bullet spelt cer- 
tain death. Now for it; now for the fight. Now for 
the great test of the " star " wild outlaw against the 
" star " human hunters — at last. The reindeer were 
to be avenged. 

Then Time took the bit of silence between his teeth 
and seconds became hours, and minutes generations. 

No sound made the wolverines as they rolled along in 
Indian file, except for the soft whisper of the snow un- 
derfoot. 



22 GULO THE INDOMITABLE 

No noise encompassed the Brothers as they sped 
swiftly side by side over the glittering white carpet, save 
for the slither of the snow under their weight. 

All the wild seemed to be standing still, holding its 
breath, looking on, spell-bound ; and save for the occa- 
sional crash of a collapsing snow-laden branch, sound- 
ing magnified as in a cave, all the forest about there was 
as still as death. 

Half-an-hour passed, and Gulo flung his head around, 
glancing over his shoulder a little uneasily, but with 
never a trace of fear in his bloodshot eyes. Then he 
grunted, and the two fell apart silently and instantly, 
gradually getting farther and farther from each other 
on a diverging course, till his wife faded out among 
the trees. But never for an instant did either of them 
check that tireless, deceptive, clumsy, rolling slouch, 
that slid the trees behind, as telegraph-poles slide be- 
hind the express carriage window. 

Half-an-hour passed, and one of the Brothers, peer- 
ing up and along the trail a little anxiously, saw the 
forking of the line ahead. Then he grunted, and the 
two promptly separated without a word, gradually in- 
creasing the distance between them on the widening 
fork till they were lost to each other among the mar- 
shaled trunks. But never for an instant did they relax 
that swift, ghostly glide on the wonderful ski, that slid 
the snow underfoot as a racing motor spins over the 
ruts. 

An hour passed. Sweat was breaking out in beads 
upon the faces of the Brothers, now miles apart, but 
both going in the same general direction over the end- 
less wastes of snow, and upon their faces was beginning 
to creep the look of that pain that strong men unbeaten 



GULO THE INDOMITABLE 23 

feel who see a beating in sight ; but never for a moment 
did they slacken their swift, mysterious glide. 

An hour passed. Foam began to fleck the evilly up- 
lifted lips glistening back to the glistening fangs of the 
wolverines, now miles apart, but still heading in the 
same general line, and upon their faces began to set a 
look of fiends under torture ; but never for a moment did 
they check their indescribable shuffling slouch. 

After that all was a nightmare, blurred and hor- 
rible, in which endless processions of trees passed dimly, 
interspersed with aching blanks of dazzling white that 
blinded the starting e} 7 es, and man and beast stumbled 
more than once as they sobbed along, forcing each leg 
forward by sheer will alone. 

At last, on the summit of a hog-backed, bristling 
ridge, Gulo stopped and looked back, scowling and peer- 
ing under his low brows. Beneath him, far away, the 
valley lay like a white tablecloth, all dotted with green 
pawns, and the pawns were trees. But he was not look- 
ing for them. His keen eyes were searching for move- 
ment, and he saw it after a bit, a dot that crept, and 
crept, and crept, and — stopped! 

Gulo sat up, shading his eyes against the w T atery sun 
with his forepaws, watching as perhaps he had never 
watched in his life before. 

For a long, long while, it seemed to him, that dot re- 
mained there motionless, far, far away down in the 
valley, and then at length, slowly, so slowly that at first 
the movement was not perceptible, it turned about and 
began to creep away — creep, creep, creep away by the 
trail it had come. 

Gulo watched it till it was out of sight, fading round 
a bend of the hills into a dark, dotted blur that was 



24 GULO THE INDOMITABLE 

woods. Then he dropped on all fours, and breathed one 
great, big, long, deep breath. That dot was the one of 
the Brothers that had been hunting him. 

And almost at the same moment, five miles away, his 
wife had just succeeded in swimming a swift and ice- 
choked river. She was standing on the bank, watching 
another dot emerge into the lone landscape, and that 
dot was the other one of the Brothers. 

They had failed to avenge the reindeer, and the wol- 
verines were safe. Safe? Bah! Wild creatures are 
never safe. Nature knows better than that, since by 
safety comes degeneration. , 

There was a warning — an instant's rustling hissing 
in the air above — less than an instant's. But that 
was all, and for the first time in his life — perhaps be- 
cause he was tired, fagged — Gulo failed to take it. 
And you must never fail to take a warning if you are 
a wild creature, you know! There are no excuses in 
Nature. 

Retribution was swift. Gulo yelled aloud — and he 
was a dumb beast, too, as a rule, but I guess the pain 
was excruciating — as a hooked stiletto, it appeared, 
stabbed through fur, through skin, deep down through 
flesh, right into his back, clutching, gripping vise-like. 
Another stiletto, hooked, too, worse than the first one, 
beat at his skull, tore at his scalp, madly tried to rip 
out his eyes. Vast overshadowing pinions — as if they 
were the wings of Azrael — hammered in his face, 
smothering him, beating him down. 

Ah, but I have seen some fights, yet never such a 
fight as that; and never again do I want to see such a 
fight as the one between Gulo and the golden eagle that 
made a mistake in his pride of power. 



GULO THE INDOMITABLE 25 

All the awful, cruel, diabolical, clever, devilish, and 
yet almost human fury that was in that old brute of a 
Gulo flamed out in him at that moment, and he fought 
as they fight who go down to hell. It was frightful. 
It was terrifying. Heaven alone knows what the eagle 
thought he had got his claws into. It was like taking 
hold of a flash of forked lightning by the point. It 
was — great ! 

Still, flight is flight, and lifting-power is lifting- 
power. Gulo, even Gulo, could not get over that. He 
could not stop those vast vans from flapping; and as 
they flapped they rose, the eagle rose, he — though it 
was like the skinning of his back alive — rose too, wrig- 
gling ignominiously, raging, foaming, snapping, kick- 
ing, but — he rose. 

Slowly, very slowly, the great bird lifted his terrible 
prey up and up — ten, twenty, thirty, forty feet, but 
no higher. That was the limit of his lift, the utmost 
of his strength ; and at that height parallel with the 
ridge, he began to carry the wolverine along, the wol- 
verine that was going mad with rage in his grasp. 

It was a mistake, of course — a mistake for the wol- 
verine to be out on the open ridge in stark daylight ; 
another mistake for the eagle, presuming on his fine, 
lustful pride of strength, to attack him. 

And then suddenly Gulo got his chance. It hit him 
bang in the face, nearly blinding him as it passed — the 
tree-top. Like lightning Gulo's jaws clashed shut 
upon it, his claws gripped, and — he thought his back 
was going to come off whole. But he stuck it. He 
was not called Gulo the Indomitable for nothing. And 
the eagle stopped too. He had to, for he would not let 
go ; nor would Gulo. 



26 GULO THE INDOMITABLE 

An awful struggle followed, in the middle of which 
the pine-top broke, gave way, and, before either seemed 
to know quite what was happening, down they both 
came, crashing from branch to branch, to earth. 

The fall broke the king of the birds' hold, but not the 
fighting fury of the most hated of all the beasts. He 
rose up, half-blind, almost senseless, but mad with rage 
beyond any conception of fury, did old Gulo, and he 
hurled himself upon that eagle. 

What happened then no man can say. There was 
just one furious mix-up of whirling, powdered snow, 
that hung in the air like a mist, out of which a great 
pinion, a clawing paw, a snapping beak, a flash of 
fangs, a skinny leg and clutching talons, a circling 
bushy tail appeared and vanished in flashes, to the ac- 
companiment of stupendous flappings and abominably 
wicked growls. 



That night the lone wolf, scouting along the ridge- 
top, stopped to sniff intelligently at the scattered, torn 
eagle's feathers lying about in the trampled snow, at 
the blood, at the one skinny, mailed, mightily taloned 
claw still clutching brown-black, rusty fur and red skin ; 
at the unmistakable flat-footed trail of Gulo, the wolver- 
ine, leading away to the frowning, threatening black- 
ness of the w r oods. He could understand it all, that 
wolf. Indeed, it was written there quite plainly for 
such as could read. He read, and he passed on. He 
did not follow Gulo's bloody trail. No — oh, dear, no ! 
Probably, quite probably, he had met Gulo the Indomi- 
table before, and — was not that enough? 



II 

BLACKIE AND CO. 

Blackie flung himself into the fight like a fiery fiend 
cut from coal. He did not know what the riot was 
about — and cared less. He only knew that the neu- 
trality of his kingdom was broken. Some one was 
fighting over his borders ; and when fighting once be- 
gins, you never know where it may end! (This is an 
axiom.) Therefore he set himself to stop it at once, 
lest worse should befall. 

He found t[wo thrushes apparently in the worst stage 
of d.t.'s. One was on his back ; the other was on the 
other's chest. Both were in a laurel-bush, half-way up, 
and apparently they kept there, and did not fall, 
through a special dispensation of Providence. Both 
fought like ten devils, and both sang. That was the 
stupefying part, the song. It was choked, one owns ; 
it was inarticulate, half-strangled with rage, but still 
it was song. 

A cock-chaffinch and a hen-chaffinch were perched on 
two twigs higher up, and were peering down at the grap- 
pling maniacs. Also two blue titmice had just arrived 
to see what was up, and a sparrow and one great tit 
were hurrying to the spot — all on Blackie's " beat," 
on Blackie's very own hunting-ground. Apparently a 
trouble of that kind concerned everybody, or everybody 
thought it did. 

27 



28 BLACKIE AND CO. 

Blackie arrived upon the back of the upper and, pre- 
sumably, winning thrush with a bang that removed that 
worthy to the ground quite quickly, and in a heap. 
The second thrush fetched up on a lower branch, and 
by the time the first had ceased to see stars he had 
apparently regained his sanity. He beheld Blackie 
above him, and fled. Perhaps he had met Blackie, pro- 
fessionally, before, I don't know. He fled, anyway, 
and Blackie helped him to flee faster than he bar- 
gained for. 

By the time Blackie had got back, the first thrush 
was sitting on a branch in a dazed and silly condition, 
like a fowl that has been waked up in the night. 
Blackie presented him with a dig gratis from his orange 
dagger, and he nearly fell in fluttering to another 
branch. And Blackie flew away, chuckling. He knew 
that, so far as that thrush was concerned, there would 
be no desire to see any more fighting for some time. 

But, all the same, Blackie was not pleased. He was 
worked off his feet providing rations for three ugly 
youngsters in a magnificently designed and exquisitely 
worked and interwoven edifice, interlined with rigid 
cement of mud, which we, in an off-hand manner, sim- 
ply dismiss as " A nest." The young were his children ; 
they might have been white-feathered angels with golden 
wings, by the value he put on them. The thrush epi- 
sode was only a portent, and not the first. He had no 
trouble with the other feathered people he tolerated on 
his beat. 

Blackie went straight to the lawn. (Jet and orange 
against deep green was the picture.) 

Now, if you and I had searched that dry lawn with 
magnifying-glasses, in the heat of the sun, there and 



BLACKIE AND CO. 29 

then, we should not have found a single worm, not the 
hint or the ghost of one ; yet that bird took three long, 
low hops, made some quick motion with his beak — I 
swear it never seemed to touch the ground, even, let 
alone dig — executed a kind of jump in the air — some 
say he used his legs in the air — and there he was with 
a great, big, writhing horror of a worm as big as a 
snake (some snakes). 

Thrushes bang their worms about to make them see 
sense and give in ; they do it many times. Blackie 
banged his giant only a little once or twice, and then 
not savagely, like a thrush. Also, again, he may or 
may not have used his feet. Moreover, he gave up two 
intervals to surveying the world against any likely or 
unlikely stalking death. Yet that worm shut up meekly 
in most unworm-like fashion, and Blackie cut it up into 
pieces. The whole operation took nicely under sixty 
seconds. 

Blackie gave no immediate explanation why he had 
reduced his worm to sections. It did not seem usual. 
Instead, he eyed the hedge, eyed the sky, eyed the sur- 
roundings. Nothing seemed immediately threatening, 
and he hopped straight away about three yards, where 
instantly, he conjured another and a smaller worm out 
of nowhere. With this unfortunate horror he hopped 
back to the unnice scene of the first worm's decease, and 
carved that second worm up in like manner. Then he 
pecked up all the sections of both worms, packing them 
into his beak somehow, and flew off. And the robin 
who was watching him didn't even trouble to fly down 
to the spot and see if he had left a joint behind. He 
knew his blackbird, it seemed. 

Blackie flew away to his nest, but not to a nest in a 



30 BLACKIE AND CO. 

hedge. To dwell in a hedge was a rule of his clan, but 
the devil a rule did he obey. Nests in hedges for other 
blackbirds, perhaps. He, or his wife, had different no- 
tions. Wherefore flew he away out into the grass field 
behind the garden. Men had been making excavations 
there, for what mad man-purpose troubled him not — 
digging a drain or something. No matter. 

Into the excavation he slipped — very, very secretly, 
so that nobody could have seen him go there — and 
down to the far end, where, twelve feet below the surface, 
on a ledge of wood, where the sides were shored with 
timber, his mate had her nest. Here he delivered over 
his carved joints to the three ugly creatures which he 
knew as his children and thought the world of, and ap- 
peared next flying 1ow t and quickly back to the garden. 
That is to say, he had contrived to slip from the nest 
so secretly that that was the first time he showed. 

A sparrow-hawk, worried with a family of her own, 
took occasion to chase him as he flew, and he arrived 
in among the young lime-trees that backed the garden, 
switchbacking — that was one of his tricks of escape, 
made possible by a long tail — and yelling fit to raise 
the world. The sparrow-hawk's skinny yellow claw, 
thrust forward, was clutching thin air an inch behind 
his central tail-feathers, but that w T as all she got of 
him — just thin air. There was no crash as he hurled 
into the green maze ; but she, failing to swerve exactly 
in time, made a mighty crash, and retired somewhat 
dazed, thankful that she retained tw r o whole wings to 
fly with. There is no room for big-winged sparrow- 
hawks in close cover, anyway, and Blackie, who was 
born to the leafy green ways, knew that. 

Blackie's yells had called up, as if by magic, a motley 



BLACKIE AND CO. 31 

crowd of chaffinches, hedge-sparrows, wrens, robins, &c., 
from nowhere at all, and they could be seen whirling in 
skirmishing order — not too close — about the retreat- 
ing foe. Blackie himself needed no more sparrow-hawk 
for a bit, and preferred to sit and look on. If the little 
fools chose to risk their lives in the excitement of mob- 
bing, let them. His business was too urgent. 

Twenty lightning glances around seemed to show 
that no death was on the lurk near by. Also, a quick 
inspection of other birds' actions — he trusted to them 
a good deal — appeared to confirm this. 

Then he flew down to the lawn, and almost immedi- 
ately had a worm by the tail. Worms object to being 
so treated, and this one protested vigorously. Also, 
when pulled, they may come in halves. So Blackie did 
not pull too much. He jumped up, and, while he was 
in the air, scraped the worm up with his left foot, or 
it may have been both feet. The whole thing was done 
in the snap of a finger, however, almost too quickly to 
be seen. 

The worm, once up, was a dead one. Blackie seemed 
to kill it so quickly as almost to hide the method used. 
In a few seconds more it was a carved worm in three or 
four pieces — an unnice sight, but far more amenable 
to reason that way. 

Blackie was in rather long grass, and nerve-rackingly 
helpless, by the same token. He could not see any- 
thing that was coming. Wherefore every few seconds 
he had to stand erect and peer over the grass-tops. It 
made no difference to the worm, however ; it was carved 
just the same. 

Blackie now hopped farther on in search of more 
worms, but found a big piece of bread instead. It was 



32 BLACKIE AND CO. 

really the hen-chaffinch who found the bread, and he 
who commandeered it from her. Now he disclosed one 
fact, and that was that bread would do for his children 
as well as worms. Anyhow, he stuffed his beak about 
half up with bread, returned for the pieces of worm, 
collected these, and retired up into the black cover of a 
fir-tree. 

No doubt he was expected to go right home with that 
load, then and there. Even a cock-blackbird with 
young, however, must feed, and, if one judged by the ex- 
cess amount of energy — if that were possible — used 
up, must feed more than usual. That seemed to be 
why he hid his whole load in the crook of a big bough, 
and, returning to the lawn, ate bread — he could wait 
to catch no worms for his own use, it appeared — as 
fast as he could. Three false alarms sent him precipi- 
tantly into his tree upon this occasion, and one real 
alarm — a passing boy — caused a fourth retreat. 

These operations were not performed in a moment, 
and by the time he got back to his nest — mind, he had 
to contrive to approach it so that he was seen by no- 
body, and his was a conspicuous livery, too — his chil- 
dren appeared to be in the last stages of exhaustion. 
That, however, is young birds all over; they expect 
their parents to be mere feeding-machines, guaranteed 
to produce so many meals to the hour, and hang the 
difficulties and the risks. 

There was no sign of Blackie's wife. Presumably she 
was working just as hard on her own " beat " as he had 
been on his — their hunting-grounds were separate, 
though they joined — and would soon be back. 

Blackie did not wait. He managed again the mir- 
acle of getting away from his nest without appearing 



BLACKIE AND CO. 33 

to do so, and next turned up on the summer-house roof. 
Fatherlike, he thought he had done enough for a bit, 
and would enjoy a " sunning reaction " on the summer- 
house roof. It was rather a good place, a look-out 
tower from which he could slip over the side into the 
hedges, which met at the corner where it was, if trouble 
turned up. 

Trouble did turn up, but not quite what he had ex- 
pected. He had been sitting there, wing-stretching, 
leg-stretching, and " preening " his feathers, and had 
finally left off just to sit and do nothing, when — lo ! 
his wife popped up over the side without warning, and 
right upon him. 

She was very dark brown, not black, and had a paler 
throat than the palish throat of most hen blackbirds — 
nearly white, in fact. She said nothing. Nor did 
Blackie, but he looked very uncomfortable. She did 
more than say nothing. She went for him, beak first, 
and very angrily indeed ; and he, not waiting to receive 
her, fled down to the lawn, and began worm-hunting for 
dear life. A whole lecture could not have said more. 

Mrs. Blackie remained on the roof for about a min- 
ute, looking round, and then flew off to her own hunt- 
ing-ground. She was wilder and less trusting of the 
world than Blackie, and did not care for his lawn in 
full view of the house windows. And Blackie did not 
even stop his work to watch her go. Apparently they 
had, previously in their married life, arrived at a per- 
fect understanding. 

This time, too, Blackie got a big and a small worm. 
The small he coiled like a rope, and held up towards the 
base of his beak ; the big he carved up into sections, 
which he held more towards the tip. The large ones, it 



34 BLACKIE AND CO. 

seemed, were too awkward and lively simply to carry off 
rolled up whole. 

The journey that followed was a fearful one in 
Blackie's life, for he met half-way the very last foe in 
the world he was expecting — namely, an owl. Truly, 
it was a very small owl, scarce bigger than himself ; but 
it was an owl, and, like all its tribe, armed to the teeth. 
Men called it a little owl. That was its name — little 
owl. Blackie didn't care what men called it ; he knew 
it only as one of the hundred or so shapes that death 
assumed for his benefit. 

Just at that time it happened to be cloudy, and lit- 
tle owls often hunt by day. But how was Blackie to 
know that, little owls being a comparatively new in- 
troduction into those parts? 

Blackie screamed and fled. The owl did not scream, 
but fled, too — after Blackie. Blackie had no means of 
judging how close that foe was behind by the whir of its 
wings. Owls' wings don't talk, as a rule ; they have a 
patent silencer, so to speak, in the fluffy-edged feathers. 
Therefore Blackie was forced to do his best in breaking 
the speed record, and trust to luck. 

It was a breathless and an awful few seconds, and it 
seemed to him like a few hours. The owl came up be- 
hind, going like a cloud-shadow, and about as fast, and 
Blackie, glancing over his shoulder, I suppose, yelled 
afresh. The terror w T as so very close. 

Then Blackie remembered another excavation, just 
like the one his nest was in, a little off his course to the 
left, and he tacked towards it, twisting his course won- 
derfully, thanks to the long tail. And the owl lost a 
foot on the turn. I think it was expecting Blackie to 



BLACKIE AND CO. 35 

make for the hedge at all costs. But, be that as it may, 
that foot was never made up again, for Blackie van- 
ished into the trench next instant, like a blown-out light, 
and, though the hunter searched for him carefully, he 
never put in an appearance again while that owl was 
within sight of the place. 

All signs of uproar on the passing of the little owl 
had died down some time before Blackie turned up 
again, and then it was in the garden, so he must have 
got from the tunnel unseen. 

He still hung gamely to the food for his young, and 
now made another attempt to deliver that food where it 
belonged. He was half-way there, indeed, before he 
saw the boys — three boys — with two rows of birds' 
eggs threaded on strings. They were passing so close 
to the trench that one nearly fell into it, and, of course, 
any one could see that they were bird-nesting. 

Blackie swerved off sharply to the far hedge, his 
heart nearly bursting with anxiety, little knowing that 
the boys had never even thought of looking in the 
trench for nests. It seemed the last place in the world 
to find one. It may have been, moreover, that he feared 
that his wife was home, in which case she might have 
lost her head, and, dashing out with a scream, " blown 
the whole gaff," as they say in the vernacular. 

Apparently madam was not at home, by good luck, 
for the boys passed, and Blackie once more executed 
the magic of getting into his nest without seeming to do 
so. And here he stayed. Dusk was setting in, and his 
young were fourteen days old. They showed it in their 
disobedience, and were not in the least inclined to keep 
as quiet as they should, considering their father had 



36 BLACKIE AND CO. 

but just warned them, in his own way, to "lie doggo," 
because of the gray shape he had seen sliding out into 
the field, a gray shape which was a cat. 

They were more like thrushes than blackbirds, those 
youngsters, with their speckly fawn breasts ; and they 
were not like the adults of either in their frog-like atti- 
tudes and heavy ways. Frankly, they were not beau- 
tiful, even at that stage; and a fortnight before, when 
they had been larger than the eggs they had come out 
of, they were positively reptilian and repulsive. 

Blackie said the blackbird equivalent to " Be quiet, 
you little fools ! " as quietly and as sternly as he could 
three or four times, and perched on the top of a wheel- 
barrow to watch the gray shadow which was a cat. 
That sudden death, however, was more afraid of the 
open than Blackie, even, and, moreover, wasn't expect- 
ing blackbirds' nests in the middle of fields. It turned 
back; and at length Mrs. Blackie, who had been on a 
general survey round about to see what foes of the 
night were on the move — and a fine hubbub she had 
made in the process — came home, reporting all well. 

Then they slept ; at least, they ceased to be any 
further seen or heard. Think, however, how you would 
sleep if every few minutes you could hear sounds in 
your house one-third of which were probably the noises 
of a burglar. Think, also, how you would feel if you 
knew that that burglar was a murderer, and that that 
murderer was, in all likelihood, looking for you, or some 
one just like you. Yet those birds were happy enough, 
I fancy. 

It was barely pale gray. It was cold and wan and 
washed, and wonderfully clean and sweet, and wet with 
dews, when a lark climbed invisibly into the sky and sud- 



BLACKIE AND CO. 37 

denly burst into song, next morning. There was some- 
thing strange and out of place, in a way, in this song, 
breaking out of the night; and as it and another con- 
tinued to break the utter silence for ten minutes, it 
seemed rather as if it were still night, and not really 
dawn at all. Dawn appeared to be waiting for some- 
thing else to give it authority, so to speak, and at the 
end of ten minutes that something else came — the slim 
form of Blackie, streaking, phantom-like, through the 
mist from the trench out in the field to the summer- 
house in the garden. Here, mounted upon the very 
top, he stood for a moment, as one clearing his throat 
before blowing a bugle, and then, full, rich, deep, and 
flute-like, he lazily gave out the first bars of his song. 
Instantly, almost as if it had been a signal, a great tit- 
mouse sang out, " Tzur ping-ping ! tzur ping-ping ! " in 
metallic, ringing notes ; a thrush struck in with his 
brassy, clarion challenge, thrush after thrush taking it 
up, till, with the clear warble of robin and higher, 
squeaking notes of hedge-sparrow and wren joining in, 
the wonderful first bars of the Dawn Hymn of the birds 
rolled away over the fields to the faraway woods, and 
beyond. 

Blackie sang on for a bit, in spite of the fact that 
people said that it was not considered " the thing " for 
a blackbird with such domestic responsibilities to sing. 
And two other blackbirds helped him to break the man- 
made rule. 

As a matter of fact, I fancy he was not taking 
chances upon the ground while the mist hung to cover 
late night prowlers, for as soon as the gay and gaudy 
chaffinches had stuck themselves up in the limes and the 
sycamores, and started their own smashing idea of song, 



38 BLACKIE AND CO. 

he was down upon the lawn giving the early worm a 
bad time. 

Then it was that he heard a rumpus that shot him 
erect, and sent his extraordinarily conspicuous orange 
dagger of a beak darting from side to side in that jerky 
way of listening that many birds affect. 

" Twet-twet-et-et-et ! twet ! twet-twet-twet-et-et- 
twet ! " came the unmistakable voice of one in a temper, 
scolding loudly. And he knew that scold — had heard 
it before, by Jove ! And who should know it if not he, 
since it was the voice of his wife? 

Perhaps he heaved a sigh as he rose from the de- 
liciously cool, wet lawn — where it was necessary to 
take long, high hops if you wanted to avoid getting 
drenched — and winged his way towards the riot. His 
wife was calling him, and it came from the other side 
of the garden, her side, behind the house. Perhaps it 
was a cat, or a rat, or something. Anything, almost, 
would set her on like that if experience, plus the ex- 
perience of blackbirds for hundreds of generations 
working blindly in her brain — and not the experience 
of books — had taught her that the precise creature 
whom she saw was a danger and a menace to young 
blackbirds. 

All the same, when Blackie arrived he was surprised, 
for all that he saw was a grayish bird with " two lovely 
black eyes," not by any means as large as a blackbird. 
When it flew it kept low, with a weak and peculiar 
flight that was deceiving; and when Mrs. Blackie, fol- 
lowing it, and yelling like several shrews, got too close, 
it turned its head, and said, " Wark ! wark ! " in a harsh 
and warning way. 

Blackie joined in with his deeper " Twoit-twoit- 



BLACKIE AND CO. 39 

twoit ! " just by way of lending official dignity to the 
proceedings. Whereupon his wife, feeling that he had 
backed her up, redoubled her excitement and shrill 
abuse. 

And they spent two solid hours at this fool's game, 
helped by a robin, a blue tit, and a chaffinch or two — 
the chaffinch must have his finger in every pie — fol- 
lowing that gray bird from nowhere, while it moved 
about the garden in its shuffling flight, or alternately 
sat and scowled at them. But it must be admitted that 
Blackie himself looked rather bored, and might have 
gone off for breakfast any time, if he had dared. 

As a matter of fact, however, the bird did not stand 
upon the Register of Bad Deeds as being a terror of 
even the mildest kind of blackbirds. Red-backed shrike 
was her name, female was her sex, and from Africa had 
she come. Goodness knows where she was going, but 
not far, probably ; and the largest thing in the bird line 
she appeared able to tackle was something of the chaf- 
finch size. But, all the same, Mrs. Blackie seemed 
jolly well certain that she knew better. 

Then arrived the bombshell. 

One of the Blackie youngsters, stump-tailed, frog- 
mouthed, blundering, foolish, gawky, and squawking, 
landed, all of a heap, right into the very middle of the 
picnic-party. 

Mrs. Blackie very nearly had a fit on the spot, and 
the shrike judged that the time had about arrived for 
her to quit that vicinity. 

Blackie himself, to do him justice, kept cool enough 
to do nothing. Wives will say that he was just hus- 
band all over, but there were reasons abroad. One of 
them shot past Blackie, who was low down, a second 



4o BLACKIE AND CO. 

later and a yard away, and had he not been absolutely 
still, and therefore as invisible as one of the most con- 
spicuous of birds in the wild can be, he would have 
known in that instant, or the next, what lies upon the 
other side of death. 

Another reason shot through the lower hedge, and, 
both together, they fell upon the young bird. 

They were the cat of the house and her half-grown 
kitten, and they were upon the unhappy youngster be- 
fore you could shout, " Murder ! " 

What followed was painful. Mrs. Blackie went clean 
demented. Blackie went — not so demented. (It al- 
ways appeared to me that his was a more practical 
mind than his wife's, perhaps because he wore a more 
conspicuous livery.) Mrs. Blackie kept passing and 
repassing the cats' backs, flying from bough to bough, 
and sometimes touching and sometimes not touching 
them. It was useless, of course, this pathetic charging ; 
and it was foolish. 

Blackie charged, too, but not within feet. 

Suddenly the old cat, who had had one eye upon Mrs. 
Blackie the whole time, sprang up and struck quickly 
twice. There was a chain of shrieks from Mrs. Blackie, 
and down she went in the grip of the clawed death. She 
never got up again. 

What had happened was simple enough. One of the 
laborers working on the trench, knowing of the nest, 
had, out of curiosity, approached a little too close, when 
the bevy of youngsters, being ready to fly, but not 
knowing it before this great fright, burst apart at his 
approach 'like a silent cannon cracker. The fear 
showed them they could use their wings. 

All three had made, flying low and*weakly, for the 



BLACKIE AND CO. 41 

nearest hedge, which was the 'garden hedge — two to the 
side which comprised their father's hunting-ground, and 
one to the side dominated by their ma. And the old 
cat and her kitten had seen them coming, and had given 
chase. 



Blackie discovered his remaining progeny sitting 
about in bushes, squawking, a few minutes later, when he 
returned, somewhat agitated to his precious lawn, and 
there he promptly proceeded to feed them. The task 
was such a large one, and took so long, and so many 
worms had to be cut up, and so much bread, and, I 
may say, when all else failed, so many daisies had to be 
picked, before he finally silenced their ceaseless, craving 
remarks, that, by the time he had finished feeding him- 
self and had a clean up, something of the pain of the 
tragedy had gone from him. 

And fine fat blackbirds he made of those youngsters, 
too, in the end, I want to tell you, for he stuck to 'em 
like a brick. 



Ill 

UNDER THE YELLOW FLAG 

A little past noon each day the sun covered a crack 
between two boards on the summer-house floor, and up 
through that aperture, for three days, had come a leggy, 
racy-looking, wolfish black spider. Each day, as it 
grew hotter, she extended her sphere of jerky investi- 
gation, vanishing down the crack again when the sun 
passed from it. 

To-day she prolonged her roamings right up the wall 
of the summer-house and along a joist bare of all save 
dust, and — well, the spider walked straight on, mov- 
ing with little jerks as if by intermittent clockwork, 
and she seemed to stroll right on top of the wasp lying 
curled up on her side. Only when one of the latter's 
delicate feelers shifted round towards her, as though in 
some uncanny way conscious of her approach, did she 
leap back as if she had touched an electric wire. Then 
she froze — flat. The wasp was lying curled up, as 
we have said, upon her side, her head tucked in, her 
wings drawn down, her jaws tight shut upon a splinter 
of wood. She had been there half-a-year, asleep, hi- 
bernating, and in that state, without any other protec- 
tion than the summer-house roof and walls, had sur- 
vived the frosts of winter. 

The wasp did not move further. 

42 



UNDER THE YELLOW FLAG 43 

The spider appeared to be taking things in, measur- 
ing her chances, weighing the risk against her fam- 
ished hunger — possibly her late husband had been her 
last meal, months ago — marking the vital spot upon 
her prey, aiming for the shot, which must be true, for 
one does not miss in attacking a wasp — and live. 
Only, she would not have risked it at all, perhaps, if 
the wasp had seemed alive, or more alive, at any rate. 

Then came the shot — one cannot in justice call it a 
spring; it was too instant to be termed that. The 
spider simply was upon the wasp without seeming to go 
there ; but the wasp was not there, or, rather, her vital 
spot wasn't. She had kicked herself round on her side, 
like a cart-wheel, lying flat, with her feet, and the 
spider's jaws struck only hard cuirass. Before the 
spider, leaping back, wolf-like, could lunge in her light- 
ning second stroke, the wasp was on her feet, a live 
thing, after all. 

The warmth had been already soaking the message of 
spring into her cold-drugged brain, and now this sud- 
den attack had finished what the warmth had begun. 
She was awake, on her feet, a live and dangerous propo- 
sition ; groggy, it is true ; dazed, half-working, so to 
speak ; but a force to be reckoned with — after half-a- 
year. And one saw, too, at a glance that she was dif- 
ferent from ordinary w T asps — would make two, in fact, 
of any ordinary wasp; and her great jaws looked as if 
they could eat one and comfortably deal with more; 
whilst her dagger-sting, now unsheathed and ready — 
probably for the first time — could deliver a wound 
twice as deep and deadly as the ordinary wasp. She 
was, in short, a queen-wasp ; a queen of the future, if 
Fate willed ; a queen as yet without a kingdom, a sov- 



44 UNDER THE YELLOW FLAG 

ereign uncrowned, but of regal proportions and 
queenly aspect, for all that ; for in the insect world 
royalties are fashioned upon a super-standard that 
marks them off from the common herd. 

The spider hesitated. She knew the danger of the 
stripes of yellow — the yellow flag, so to speak. The 
fear of it is upon every insect that lives. At the same 
time, the queen was undoubtedly yet numb. 

Antagonists decide in the insect world like a flash 
of light, and quick as thought they act. The spider 
attacked now so quickly that she seemed to have van- 
ished, and she met — jaws. Back she shot, circled, 
shot in again, and she met — sting! 

It was never clear whether that sting went home. 
The spider did. She fell — fell plump to the floor, only 
not breaking what spiders have in place of a neck be- 
cause of the fact that, being a spider, she never moved 
anywhere, not even upon a spring, without anchoring a 
line of web down first. Therefore, an inch from the 
ground, she fetched up with a jerk upon the line that 
she had anchored up on the joist, spun round, let herself 
drop the rest of the way, and ran into the crack be- 
tween the boards of the floor. Goodness knows if she 
lived. 

The wasp, with that extremely droll, lugubrious look 
on her long, mask -like face which makes the faces of 
insects so funny and uncanny, like pantomime masks, 
sat down as if nothing had happened, apparently to 
scheme out the best way to possess herself of a king- 
dom and become a queen in fact as well as in name. 
Really, she was cleaning herself — combing her antennae 
with her forelegs, provided with bristle hairs for the 
purpose, scraping and polishing her wings, as if they 



UNDER THE YELLOW FLAG 45 

did not already shine like mother-o'-pearl, and washing 
her quaint face. 

She was still rather groggy from the effects of her 
long sleep and the cold endured — it is a wonder how 
she had stood the latter at all — and when, with a sub- 
dued inward sort of hum, she finally launched herself 
in flight, she nearly fell to the ground before righting 
herself and flying in a zigzag heavily across the lawn. 

A cock- chaffinch up in the limes saw her, and con- 
descending at last to break his song, described a flash- 
ing streak of wine-red breast and white wing-bars in 
the sun. He appeared to recognize her sinister yellow 
shield in time, however, and returned to his perch with 
a flourish, leaving the wasp to go on and begin danc- 
ing up the wall of the house till she came to the open 
window. Here she vanished within. 

The sunlight sat on the floor of the room inside, and 
the baby sat in the sunlight ; and the wasp, apparently 
still half-awake, went, or, rather, nearly tumbled, and 
sat beside the baby. 

They made an odd picture there — the golden sun, 
the sunny, golden-headed baby, and that silent, yellow 
she-devil, crawling, crawling, crawling, with her narrow 
wings gleaming like gems. 

Then the child put out her chubby hand to seize that 
bright-yellow object — how was she to know that it was 
the yellow signal of danger in the insect world that she 
saw? And, of course, being a baby, she was going to 
stuff it into her mouth. But Fate had use for that 
wasp — perhaps for that baby. Wherefore there was 
a little scream, a pair of woman's arms swept down and 
whisked that baby into the air, and a high-heeled shoe 
whisked the astonished wasp into a corner. Here she 



46 UNDER THE YELLOW FLAG 

swore savagely, vibrating her head with tremendous 
speed in the process, rose heavily and menacingly, made 
to fly out, hit the upper window, which was shut, and 
which she could not see, but felt, and fell to the floor 
again, where she apparently had brain-fever, buzzing 
round and round on her back like a top the while. 

And then, rising suddenly, the queen flew away, hit- 
ting nothing in the process, but getting through the 
lower and open part of the w r indow. She seemed anx- 
ious to make sure of not getting into the house again. 
She flew right away, rising high to top the garden 
hedge, and dropping low on the far side, to buzz and 
poke about in and out, up along the hedge-bank that 
bordered the hayfield. 

She flew as one looking for something, and every in- 
sect in her way took jolly good care — in the shape of 
scintillating streaks and dashes — to get out of it. 
The mere sight of that yellow-banded cuirass shining 
in the sun was apparently quite enough for them — 
most of them, anyway. As a matter of fact, she was 
looking for a site for a city. She had ambition, and 
would found her a city, a cit} r of her very own, with 
generous streets at right angles, on the American plan ; 
and she would be queen of it. It was a big idea, and 
we should have said an impossible one, seeing that at 
that moment she was the city and its population and its 
queen all rolled into one, so to speak. Queen^wasps, 
however, also on the American plan, ruled the word 
" impossible " out of their dictionary long ago. They 
" attempt the end, and never stand to doubt." 

The queen came to rest on a bare patch of ground in 
front of a hole, and a black and hairy spider, with two 
hindlegs missing on the offside, spun round in the en^ 



UNDER THE YELLOW FLAG 47 

trance of that hole to face her. He had not been no- 
ticeable until he moved. 

She left him in a hurry, and thereafter resumed her 
endless searching along the hedge-bank. A dozen times 
she vanished into a hole, and, after a minute or so, came 
out again with the air of one dissatisfied. Half-a- 
dozen times she came out tail first, buzzing warnings 
and very angry, at the invitation of a bumble-bee queen, 
a big, hook-jawed, carnivorous beetle in shining mail, 
and so forth, but she never lost her head. 

Finally, she came to a mole-hole that suited her. 
The other burrows had all turned out to be field-mouse 
holes, leading ultimately into a main tunnel that ran 
the whole length of the hedge apparently, and was a 
public way for all the little whiskered ones. But this 
tunnel, bored by the miner mole, ran nowhither, having 
caved in not far from the entrance, and was very sound 
of construction, with a nice dry slope. She selected a 
wide spot where the tunnel branched, each branch form- 
ing a cul-de-sac. Here she slew swiftly several sus- 
picious-looking little tawny beetles and one field-cricket, 
who put up a rare good fight for it, found loafing about 
the place. 

It pleased the queen that here, in this spot, she would 
found her a city. But first she must, as it were, take 
the latitude and the longitude of this her stronghold to 
be. She must know where her city was, must make 
absolutely dead sure, certain, of finding it again when 
she went out. Otherwise, if she lost it — well, there 
would be an end to it before it had begun, so to speak. 
For this purpose, therefore, she rose slowly, humming 
to herself some royal incantation — rose, upon a grad- 
ually widening corkscrew spiral, into the air. 



48 UNDER THE YELLOW FLAG 

She was, in point of fact, surveying the district 
round her capital to be, marking each point — bush, 
stone, grass-tuft, tree-trunk, flower-cluster, clod, 
branch, anything and everything, great and small — 
and jotting down in indelible memory fluid, upon what- 
ever she kept for a brain, just precisely the position of 
every landmark. And as she rose her circles ever 
widened, so that at last her big compound eyes took in 
quite a big stretch of sunlit picture, to be photographed 
upon her memory, and there remain forevermore. 

It took her some time, for it was some job; but once 
done, it was done for good. 

Next, alighting with great hustle — now that the 
work was once begun — the queen ran into her tunnel, 
and made sure that nobody had "jumped her claim" 
in the interval. She found an ant, red and ravenous, 
taking too professional an interest in the place, and she 
abolished that ant with one nip; though, as you may be 
sure, the tiny insect fought like a bulldog. 

Then she executed a shallow excavation upon the 
site of the future city itself, carrying each pellet of 
earth outside beyond the entrance. This also took 
time, though she worked at fever-pitch, almost with 
fury; but she managed to finish it, and fly away into 
the landscape in a remarkably short while, consider- 
ing. 

Here once again she appeared to be searching for 
something through the yellow sunshine and the falling 
blossom-petals — confetti from Spring's wedding. 
And presently she found it, or seemed to — an old 
gate, off its hinges. But the wood was rotting, and 
she was no fool. She knew her job — the job she had 



UNDER THE YELLOW FLAG 49 

never done before, by the way — and after humming 
around it in a fretful, undecided sort of fashion for 
some while, she flew on. Apparently she was looking 
for wood, but not any wood. Cut wood appeared to 
be her desire, and that oak ; at least, she put behind her 
a deal board lying half-overgrown, after one careful 
professional inspection. 

Her way was through a perilous world, beset by a 
thousand foes, mostly in the nature of traps and lines 
and barbed-wire entanglements set by spiders. As a 
rule you didn't see these last at all — nor did she ; but 
her yellow-and-black badge usually won her a way of 
respect — and hate — and she cut or struggled herself 
clear of such web-lines as her feelers failed to spot in 
time. 

At last she found some real oak rails, and set to 
work upon them at once, planing with her sharp shear- 
jaws. A tiger-beetle, gaudy and hungry-eyed, sought 
to pounce upon her in this task. He was long-legged, 
and keen, and lean, and very swift; but she shot aloft 
just in time; and when she came down again, with a 
z-zzzzp, as quickly as she went up, sting first, he had 
wisely dodged into a cranny, where he defied her with 
open and jagged jaws. 

Again getting to work, she planed off a pellet of good 
sound wood — it looked like a nail-scrape, the mark she 
made — and masticating it and moistening it with 
saliva, whirred back like a homing aeroplane to her city 
in the making. 

There was a whir and a buzz as she passed through 
the portals of her main gate from the light of day, and 
she reappeared again, backing out, " looking daggers," 



50 UNDER THE YELLOW FLAG 

as we sa}', and brandishing her poisoned dart — her 
sting, if you insist, on the end of her tail — in the air. 
But she still hung on to her pellet. 

Presumably some unlucky visitor had called in her 
absence. More sounds of concentrated argument fol- 
lowed, and finally there fell out, rather than rushed out, 
a small and amazingly slender black wasp, one of those 
hermits who seem to consecrate their lives to lonelv 
working for a family they never see. This unhappy 
one slid down the bank, curled up at the bottom, un- 
curled, curled up again, and — remained curled. Ap- 
parently her day's work was done, which comes of fall- 
ing foul of the yellow flag. 

Arrived inside, at her hallowed chamber, our queen 
carefully selected a rootlet in the roof — not just an}' 
old rootlet, mark you ; never any " old " anything, you 
will notice, but a good, sound, well-found rootlet that 
you could hang five or six pounds' weight to ; indeed, 
three rootlets before she had finished. To these root- 
lets she fastened — gummed would be a more correct 
word — her pellet of wasp-paper, in the form of a thin 
layer, and hurried away, singing, for more. This was, 
so to speak, the foundation-stone of the city, laid, be it 
noticed, not haphazard — our queen never did any busi- 
ness that way — but with mathematical regard as to 
what was to follow. In very fact, too, it was the foun- 
dation-stone of her city, only upside-down, though that 
is nothing. Wasps always do things that way, which 
is unlike ants, those other and greater city builders. 

Back came the queen very soon with another load, 
and pasted that — thin — to the first layer, hurrying, 
bustling, humming a happy song continuously to her- 
self. Then away again for more, and in the process 



UNDER THE YELLOW FLAG 51 

to a lively battle with a robber-fly, who appeared set 
upon robbing her of her blood. It tried, like the beetle, 
to stalk her and pounce upon her back, what time she 
was planing out wood for paper-pulp ; but her back 
wasn't there when it pounced, and her jaws were. It 
" waited on," hovering like a falcon, and twice as keen, 
and when she got to work again, dropped like a hurled 
lance-head, only to be met with jaws, wide and ready, 
as before. 

It went away, watching from afar — far for an in- 
sect — from " the little speedwell's darling blue " upon 
the hedge-bank, and just as she was moistening the load, 
gathered ready to fly off, delivered its final ultimatum 
— a marvelously persistent murderer. This time it, 
or, rather, she, was received with the point — the pois- 
oned point — and, turning like a spent lightning-flash 
to avoid it, found the queen hard on her heels, follow- 
ing all down the gay hedge-ditch, humming high, in 
nearly a shriek of rage. Finally, she turned, to do bat- 
tle for her life, and the two, grappling, fell as shoot- 
ing-stars fall, gleaming, athwart the sun, with a brrr-r 
like a fused wire, and finished the job, rolling over and 
over on the ground — rolling over and over among the 
stalks of bluebells, like the heavens " upraising from the 
earth." 

It is written, however, that few in the insect world 
can withstand a queen of the yellow devils, and in a 
few seconds the wasp got up and flew home again, quite 
unperturbed. The robber-fly did not get up, and she 
was not quite unperturbed, but died as they die who 
are poisoned with formic acid, and very soon was still. 

By the time the shadows crept across the entrance 
to the derelict mole-hole, warning the wasp back — 



52 UNDER THE YELLOW FLAG 

for your true wasp is a worshiper of the sun — the 
queen had formed a disc of paper, and suspended there- 
from, in the middle, a stalk, also of paper, which wid- 
ened out at its base, and became, as it were, the outlines 
of four six-sided cells. The cells were in the shape of 
a cross — that cross which you will always find at the 
foundation of the cities of the waspfolk, and, in a way, 
a sign or mark of their nationality — the cross in the 
market-square, so to speak, outwards from which the 
city grew. 

The queen, satisfied apparently with her new city so 
far, hung up and went to sleep. When anything or 
anybody came to prospect for house lots, or edible vic- 
tims, during the still, silent, silver night, she hummed 
very severely, like an electric fan, to let the intruders 
know who she was, and they mostly backed out again in 
a hurry. If they took a step nearer the hum rose an 
octave, and became very wicked, and that, so far as 
most of them were concerned, finished it. 

Two, however, there were who would not take even 
that hint. One was a shrew-mouse, thirsting for blood, 
but who got poison instead, and next morning was found 
running about with his mouth somewhere concealed be- 
hind his ear, if one may be pardoned the expression, in 
consequence ; and the other was a carnivorous beetle, in 
black, purple-shot armor, and armed with jaws toothed 
like lobsters' claws. The queen took some nasty scars 
from those same jaws before she got home with the pois- 
oned point, a clean thrust 'twixt breastplate and arm- 
let, and the invader doubled up on the spot where he 
was, and had to be dragged out in the morning — not 
the dawning, for the sun had well stoked up before our 
wasp would have anything to do with him. 



UNDER THE YELLOW FLAG 53 

She found the day already in full swing when she 
rose, buzzing, from her front-gate, late — for wasps 
hate early morning chill, like Red Indians — and, cir- 
cling once, swung straight away. She jumped into full 
hustle right off, you see. She did not merely work ; she 
superworked. Forced to short hours by her consti- 
tution, she had to make up for it in the time she got, 
and she did. She allowed nothing to stop her. If 
anything tried to, she mostly stopped it, for there was 
no compromise about this nation-builder ; she reached 
her goal every time. 

It was on this journey that a spotted fly-catcher, sit- 
ting on a gatepost, made a Euclid figure at her in mid- 
air as she passed. She had not power to fight the bird's 
beak, and her poison-dagger was useless here ; nor do 
fly-catchers often miss. This, however, was an occa- 
sion when one of them did — by an eighth of an inch — 
and only some electric-spark-like dodging on the part 
of the insect in the air made even that one miss pos- 
sible. It was so quick, you could not see what hap- 
pened. 

That day the cross of cells in this budding city was 
developed further, and a low wall built round each cell. 
Moreover, more cells were built, always taking the cross 
as the center of all things — six-sided cells, with a low, 
incomplete wall, or, rather, parapet, partitioning each 
off, to the number of about twenty-four cells in all. 
Each cell was closed, of course, at the top, the top be- 
ing its floor, and open at the bottom, the bottom being, 
if I may so put it, the top ; for, as has already been said, 
wasp cities are built upside-down, and everybody walks 
and hangs on his head, being so fitted for the purpose. 
If you don't hang, you tumble straight down into the 



54 UNDER THE YELLOW FLAG 

scooped-out cavity below ; but nobody ever does that till 
he dies, for that cavity is at once the cemetery and the 
refuse-heap and the dust-bin of the city, a haunt of tiny 
ghouls — beetle, spider, and fly ghouls — and other 
loathsome horrors, the scavengers, hyenas, vultures, 
and jackals of the wasp world. 

Now, after making the first cell, or, rather, the part 
cell, with its low parapet, the queen laid an egg — it 
was very minute, that egg — inside the cell, gumming 
it against the top, on the angle nearest the center of 
the city. It had to be cemented there; otherwise it 
would have fallen out. 

In the next cell she laid an egg, too, cementing it up 
to the top in the same manner — always in the angle 
nearest the center of the city — and in the next another 
egg, and so on, up to the twenty-four or so. It is a 
little doubtful precisely how long she took over the proc- 
ess, because, for one thing, she made so many journeys 
backwards and forwards to get wood-pulp from the 
rails for paper manufacture — she used paper for 
everything; and, for another thing, she began to roof 
over the whole affair with a hanging umbrella made of 
layers of the finest paper that you ever did see — 
much finer than that made by the ordinary common or 
garden worker-wasp of the jam-pots and the stewed- 
fruit dish, for was she not a queen, and therefore not 
common in anything she did? — and it became, in con- 
sequence, rather hard to see what she really was " at." 
Most of the time that the sky remained cloudy she used 
up at this job, and also when there was a shower of rain, 
for she hated rain and all shadow and darkness. 

Her purpose, in regard to this paper roofing, was to 
keep out any possible dripping that might come through 



UNDER THE YELLOW FLAG 55 

the earth roof in wet weather, and to store up and mul- 
tiply the heat from her body. Terrific heat, to be sure ; 
nevertheless important in the scheme of things. When 
all was completed, this city, this mighty kingdom, meas- 
ured about one and a half inches round. 

When all was completed, also, the wasp flew out for 
a drink and a feed. But first she cleaned. The most 
fastidious cat was a grimy tramp in comparison to her 
in habits, and in all her spare time — goodness alone 
knows how she squeezed in any spare time at all during 
those hustling days ! — her first, and generally her last, 
act was to clean. She could not afford dirt. To be 
dirty, with her, was to die even more quickly than she 
would, anyway; for, you see, she did not breathe 
through her mouth, but all over herself, so to speak — 
through her armor, or hair-like tubes in that same. 

From bluebell to cowslip and lily she picked her way, 
sipping honey and humming a wicked little hum through 
her teeth, as it were, and on to where 

Daisies pied, and violets blue, 
And cuckoo buds of yellow hue, 
And lady-smocks all silver white, 
Do paint the meadows with delight. 

Now she toyed with a yellow oxlip, now paused at a 
purple lungwort ; but most she went into the garden, 
and hovered, still as a humming-bird, among the rose- 
leaves and branches, especially those growing against 
the sun-bathed old wooden porch, and for so long that 
one wondered what she was doing there. She was lick- 
ing up the " honey-dew," which, translated, is the juice 
exuded by the plant-lice or " green-fly," which swarmed 
all over the rose-trees. This " honey-dew " was sweet, 
and in great demand among such insects as had tastes 



56 UNDER THE YELLOW FLAG 

that way ; in fact, the enterprising ants — who are al- 
ways a decade ahead of everybody else — were, in one 
place, building mud sheds over the said herds of plant- 
lice to prevent their precious " honey-dew " being ex- 
ploited by others. 

Thus a week passed, the queen fussing daily about her 
embryo city, adding paper covering here, strengthening 
a wall there, warning off an inquisitive insect somewhere 
else, and adding her heat to the natural stuffiness of the 
place, though one would scarcely have thought she could 
have made much difference. At times, too, in the hot 
sun, she appeared here or there outside, drinking honey 
from some flower, or sipping " honey-dew," much to 
the ants' disgust and anger. 

Then, at the end of the week, the first egg hatched 
out within the city, and, frankly, what came forth was 
not lovely. It was a legless grub, fat, presumably 
blind, and helpless ; and it would have fallen head down- 
wards out of the cell, as it hatched, if it had not had the 
sense to hook its tail into its own egg-shell, which in 
turn, as we know, was already fastened to the top of 
the cell. But it had jaws, and in addition, apparently, 
an appetite to use them. 

Whether the queen loved it, her first baby, was hard 
to tell. Did she, indeed, ever love anything? She cer- 
tainly did her duty by it ; but what was the use of set- 
ting up to be a queen, anyway, if she could not do that? 
And, moreover, you've got to do your duty in the wild. 
There's no profit in monkeying with Nature, as is 
possible with civilization, for the penalty thereof is 
death. 

Wherefore did our queen, after making quite sure 
that the sack-like atom with a mouth, hanging upside- 



UNDER THE YELLOW FLAG 57 

down in the cell, and wriggling like anything to show 
its hunger, was alive, sound, and quite all there, quit 
home in a hurry, and with a loud buzz, in search of 
rations. But there was a change in her manner from 
that adopted when looking for food for herself, and 
for good reason. Then her object had been honey; 
now it was — scalps ! 

From force of habit, more perhaps than from force 
of reasoning, she flew to the rose-trees, and there fixed 
in her shear jaws not more than two of the helpless, 
fool, unarmed, soft, juicy green-fly, which are really 
no more, if one may so put it, than living, infinitesimal 
" white " grapes. That she was challenged by a sentry 
ant — about as big to her as a bulldog to us — that the 
sentry gave the alarm, that the guard turned out from 
one of the ants' " cowsheds " over some of the green-fly, 
and that she went away in a hurry, with half-a-dozen 
furious ants on their hindlegs, trying to get hold of 
her retiring feet with their jaw.s, was a matter treated 
by her with insolent unconcern. 

She had got her scalps, and winging home in a hurry 
to her baby, fed it upon green-fly. The baby did not 
feed nicely, and the picture of the glistening, corsleted 
devil queen-mother, with her lugubrious, mask-like face, 
and the wriggling, hanging sack babe, and the luckless, 
fool, helpless green-fly between them, was not a pretty 
one. Here maternity was not a Sunday-sermon sub- 
ject, yet it was maternity all the same. 

By this time other eggs in other cells were splitting, 
and giving out legless grub horrors, as seeds that give 
forth plants, each wriggling mummy taking care to 
hook itself up to its shell by the tail at once, lest it 
perish. And the queen's work from that moment really 



58 UNDER THE YELLOW FLAG 

began. Till then she had only tinkered at it, appar- 
ently. Now she got going " real some," and — well, 
all the insect world outside knew it. The terror of the 
yellow flag spread. 

Upon an hour she would appear, dropping, hawk- 
like and terrible, out of the sun-glare, and neatly pick 
up a soft and juicy caterpillar from a cabbage-stalk. 
Upon another hour she would be discovered, feet tucked 
up and wary, darting, like an iridescent gleam, around 
the angry ants, among the green-fly on the rose-bushes. 
The drowsy hum of the kettle on the kitchen fire, and 
the steady, low hum of the house-fly dance in the middle 
of the room, would be answered in the long, hot after- 
noons by her wicked warning drone as she came sailing 
in at the open window, like the insolent pirate that she 
was, to go out again a minute later with a helpless fly 
between her jaws. The first heat of the sun, drinking 
up the dew, would discover her sailing forth to war; 
his full, sizzling rays would reveal her waging violent 
warfare with the bluebottle flies over some carcass ; into 
his amber light of the noon her yellow flag would sud- 
denly rise from out the cool shade of the larder, where 
she had been carving meat, and " when the sun mended 
his twisted copper nets," he would flash in bronze from 
her glistening cuirass as she droned by high over some 
wriggling grub, caterpillar, or palsied fly fast locked in 
her jaws — and all for her young, all for her couple of 
dozen legless horrors, hanging by their tails, each in its 
narrow cell, in darkness and in dead silence, in the 
embryo city under the secret earth. 

Time was when these same grubs grew so fat and big 
that they no longer hung, but became fast wedged in 
their dormitories ; time when the queen had to set to 



UNDER THE YELLOW FLAG 59 

and extend downwards the wall of each cell lest the 
growing inmates bulge over, and, obsessed with their 
ravening hunger, incontinently eat each other; and time 
at last when, one after the other, each grub, having 
grown out of more than one suit of clothes and donned 
new ones, cast its skin for the last time, refused all 
further food, spun a cocoon of silk with a dome-shaped 
silken floor to each cell, and for a period retired from 
the prying eyes of the world, even of its own mother, 
into the sacred sanctuary of the chrysalis state. Then 
the queen's labor lightened a little for a period, so that 
you could again see her at spare moments sucking 
nectar from the flowers for herself, robbing the jam- 
dish, or lapping up the " honey-dew " of the green- 

fly- 

Finally came the day. It dawned all right, and there 
was nothing about it to show that it was going to be 
different from any other fine day; yet, as soon as the 
wasp woke up, she knew that, for her, it was the day of 
Fate. 

A very cursory inspection of the budding city showed 
at once that during the night things had been happen- 
ing and changes taking place. The domed floors of 
several of the cells were palpitating with life from 
within, and there were sounds of the gnawing and 
tearing of the silken screens. 

The queen became greatly excited, and began to hum 
and dance a little step-dance to herself, all alone in the 
darkness among the cells, as she saw her triumph evolv- 
ing before her eyes. And, almost as if the hum had 
called it, there rushed at her, out of the blackness across 
the comb, a — a thing. 

She knew by instinct that it was an enemy. Indeed, 



6o UNDER THE YELLOW FLAG 

it could not well be anything else, but it fought like a 
black devil. 

It was, in point of fact, a mole-cricket, a creature 
just like its namesake, if an insect can be said to re- 
semble an animal, only that its jaws were like unto the 
jaws of a lobster. It was a fearsome apparition, and 
very much larger even than the queen. The good God 
alone know it h why it had chosen that moment and 
place to run apparently amok. 

But, if the mole-cricket ran amok, the queen-wasp 
went berserk. It was a thing unthinkable that in that 
moment of triumph she, and the awakening city with 
her, should be cut off — unthinkable and impossible, 
unthinkable and maddening. Therefore she fought as 
few wasps have probably fought before or since, and 
they are pretty expert exponents, and scarcely back- 
ward ones, of warfare. 

The battle that followed was awful. 

Almost at the start the two insects, grappling, fell 
headlong to the excavation the queen had made below 
the city, and there, rolling over and over, continued the 
struggle in the dark among the refuse, the queen 
eternally feeling with her poison-dagger for a space to 
drive home her death-blow between the other's smooth, 
shining armor-plates; the cricket eternally endeavoring 
to behead the queen between its awful jaws. 

It was a light to the death, as most insect duels are, 
and it could not last long. It was too tense, too 
fiendish, too shockingly wicked for that. 

Suddenly the queen's body shot out like a spring. 
The opening she had been feeling for had appeared, and 
she had driven her death-blow home. At the same 
instant, with a supreme effort, she bent double and shot 



UNDER THE YELLOW FLAG 61 

herself free, the last convulsive, shearing crush of her 
foe's jaws clashing to so close above her head that tiny 
actually caught in their death-grip, and held, till she 
pulled them out by the roots, two bristles of her neck. 

And then — well, then the queen hurried back up to 
her city, just in time to help out of its cell the first of 
her children — and citizens at last — the first limp, 
clambering, damp, newly painted, freshly bedecked 
young worker-wasp, perfect from feeler to sting, from 
wing to claw. 

Quickly they broke out now from the cocoons, and 
the queen bustled from one to the other, assisting, 
cleaning, encouraging; for it is a tricky job for an 
insect to come out of its chrysalis-case. The queen's 
work, however, was really done ; for, though for a day 
or two, till their cuirasses and wings hardened, these 
new young worker-wasps only did light labor, acting 
as nurses to the others that were following, and so on, 
they quickly took upon their own shoulders the whole 
of the work of the city : the nursing and feeding of the 
young, the hunting, the building, the scavenging, and 
the waiting upon and feeding the queen-mother herself 
completely, so that she should henceforth labor not, nor 
fight, nor waste herself in the chase, but should keep at 
home and lay countless eggs, and eggs, and always 
nothing but eggs, for the workers to rear for the benefit 
of the State. 



To-day that city has a population of nearly 60,000, 
and contains over 11,000 cells; and the queen is still 
there, laying eggs, eggs, and again eggs, till — 



TV 

NINE POINTS OF THE LAW 

Sharp's the word with her. — Swift. 

Some people never know when they are well off. It 
is a complaint which afflicts dats, you may have noticed, 
and gets them into much trouble that their con- 
temptuous temper might otherwise leave them free from. 
The silver tabby would have done better if she had 
remained asleep upon Miss Somebody's arm-chair, in- 
stead of squatting, still as marble, out in a damp field 
on a damp night, watching a rabbits'' "stop" — which 
is vernacular for a bunnies' nursery — and thinking 
how nice raw, pink baby-rabbit would taste if she got 
the chance to sample it. She didn't. At least, she 
hadn't for an hour and a half; but, then, what's an 
hour and a half to a cat? Apparently the silver tabby 
could wait, just like that, utterly inert, till the crack 
of doom — or dawn. 

Mind you, she was not alone. She had company. 
One always has in the wild at night, or nearly always. 
You couldn't see that company, but I don't know 
whether the silver tabby could. Who can tell how 
much a cat sees, anyway? Nor do I think the company 
could see her, she being still, and wild eyes not being 
good at picking out the still form. Neither could they 
hear her, for she said nothing; neither did she purr. 

62 



NINE POINTS OF THE LAW 63 

They must have smelt her, though. Anyway, she 
seemed to be a little island in the mist — the faint, 
faint, ethereal dew-mist — where nobody walked. You 
could hear them — a rustle here, a squeak there, a thud 
somewhere else, a displaced leaf, a cracked twig — this 
only once — a drumming, a patter, a sniff, a snuffle, a 
sigh ; but they all passed by on the other side, so to 
say, and gave the silver tabby room to think. Appar- 
ently cats are not considered good company in the wild ; 
lonely creatures, they are best left alone. 

No mother-rabbit came to the " stop " — which the 
cat knew to be there — to feed her babies, which the cat, 
thanks to her nose, knew to be there, too. No baby- 
rabbits came out to be fed — or to feed the cat either. 
" Stops " are secrets, kept from the rest of rabbitdom 
by the wise mothers, and, they hope, from other 
inquisitive people also. The little short holes in the 
middle of the field are plugged up by the old does with 
grass and fur when they are away, which is pretty 
often. 

Then the silver tabby heard a thump come out of the 
night — a thud, hollow, resounding, and noticeable. It 
was repeated after an interval, and again repeated. 
There was a certain note of insistence about it — like 
a signal. And if the cat had been a wild creature she 
would have thrown up the sponge, or gone away, and 
returned secretly later, or, anyway, not persisted in 
crouching there ; for those thuds were a signal, and they 
meant that the game was up. In other words, some 
wily old mother circling the approach, or some wander- 
ing back-eddy of wind, had given the cat away ; she had 
been scented, and rabbit after rabbit, squatting invisible 
in the night, was thumping the ground with its feet to 



64 NINE POINTS OF THE LAW 

say so and warn all off whom it might concern. The 
silver tabby, however, neither wild nor satisfied to be 
tame, did not know. She sat on, and in doing so 
wondered, perhaps, at the scarcity of rabbits there- 
abouts. 

She sat, or hunched, or crouched, or couched, or 
whatever you call that precise position of cats, which is 
neither lying down nor sitting up, for some time longer 
— for another twenty minutes, to be precise ; and all 
the while the thuds of mystery serenaded her from 
nowhere in particular out of the dark — and from 
down-wind. 

Then she must have come to the conclusion that she 
was being made a fool of, for she got up, stretched her- 
self lazily, with arched back and bared claws, and 
yawned a bored feline yawn. And even as she did so 
she was aware of a sudden final flourish of thuds, and 
then dead-silence. Next moment, in that same dead- 
silence, she distinctly heard something coming towards 
her, and that something was taking no pains to conceal 
the fact. 

Now, in the wild it is not the custom to go towards 
anything and take no pains to conceal the fact. The 
unhealth of such a procedure is swiftly borne in upon 
such rash ones as make the experiment, and they seldom 
live long enough to pass their folly on. Only the 
mighty can afford not to walk circumspectly, and they 
are very few, and, with man about, even they have 
learnt wisdom. That is why the wild is so guarded, 
and why self-effacement becomes almost a religion 
therein. 

Even the cat knew this, I fancy. Anyway, she looked 
surprised as she crouched again, and quickly. 



NINE POINTS OF THE LAW 65 

Now, of all the wild-people, probably one of the most 
brazen is the pig; it is also one of the bravest. I mean, 
the wild pig. And it would seem that he, or she, who 
came that way was a pig, only a precious little one. 
You know the ways of a pig? How you can hear him 
coming long before he comes ; how he must snuffle, and 
grunt, and poke dead leaves, and snort, and tread on 
things, and snore. Very good. So it was here ; and 
these things did this new-comer, who approached 
through the mist — onhy all in a dwarfed way, as if 
they were done by a tiny grown-up pig. Its gruntings 
were almost to itself; its snortings, snorings, and sniff- 
ings quite small ; and its snorts little miniature ones. 
Only, in the profound silence of the night, and in com- 
parison with the furtive noises of all the rest of the 
night-wild, they sounded quite loud. 

The cat, as she crouched, passed from supercilious 
surprise to amazement. You could tell that by the 
roundness of her eyes. She had no knowledge of pigs, 
and had never met any of the wild-folk gone mad; yet 
it seemed that one must have done so now, and that one 
— to her growing uneasiness — was coming straight 
towards her. I fancy that in that moment she thought 
of the warm fire, the singing kettle, the saucer of milk, 
and Miss Somebody's best arm-chair. 

The thing, whatever it was, came straight on in a 
more or less zigzag line, till the cat could make it out 
dimly in the moonlight, a blotched, roughly egg-shaped 
form, less than a foot long, so low to the ground that 
it appeared to be running on wheels, and covered all 
over with prickles, like a Rugby ball into which tin 
tacks had been driven head first, the sharp ends pointing 
outwards and backwards. Its head was the small end, 



66 NINE POINTS OF THE LAW 

and much lower than its back. Its eyes, little and pig- 
like, set in a black cowl, gleamed red in the tired moon- 
light ; and its face was the face of a pig, nothing else 
— just pure pig; insolent,°cunning, vulgar, and blatant. 
Occasionally men name a wild beast correctly, and this 
little beast could only have one name — hedgehog*. It 
was obvious on the face of it. 

But the cat, being a cat and an aristocrat, knew, as 
has been said, nothing about pigs, real or only so called. 
She had killed a shrew once, and spat it out for tasting 
abominably and smelling worse; and shrews are cousins 
of the hedgehogs, of the same great clan, Insectivora — 
far removed from the pigs, really — and that is the 
nearest she had got. 

She had never heard of hedgehogs, and never, never 
met a beast that walked through the wild as if he owned 
it. And, more, he expected her to get out of his way, 
which she did with feline and concentrated remarks ; and 
he — by the whiskers and talons! — the fool exposed 
his back — turned his back openly, a thing no wild 
beast in its senses would do, unless running away. And 
that, for a cat who had waited close on two hours for 
baby business that didn't turn up, had got most un- 
fashionablv drenched, and had, moreover, in her time, 
tackled more than one grown-up rabbit, which was con- 
siderably larger than any hedgehog — that, I say, was, 
for the silver tabby, too much. 

She sprang. Rather, she executed two bounds, and 
somewhat unexpectedly found herself on top of the 
hedgehog. I say " unexpectedly," because she had 
hitherto bounded upon wild-folk who contrived mostly 
not to be there. This one contrived nothing, except to 
stup still. And the cat executed a third bound — off 



NINE POINTS OF THE LAW 67 

the hedgehog, and rather more violently and more 
quickly than the first two. Also, she spat. 

When she had got over the intense pain — and cats 
feel pain badly — of sharp spines digging into her soft 
and tender forefoot-pads, she stopped, about two yards 
away, and glared at the hedgehog as if he had played 
off' a foul upon her, and she w T as surprised to see that 
he was no longer egg-shaped, but rolled up into himself 
like a ball, so to speak, and utterly quiescent. (I 
wonder if she remembered the little wood-lice that she 
had so often amused herself playing with in idle hours. 
They rolled themselves up just like that. Perhaps she 
thought she'd come upon the Colossus of all the wood- 
lice.) Anyway, after she had spat off at him all the 
vile remarks she could think of for the moment, without 
producing any more reply than she would get from the 
average stone, she came back, drawn with curiosity as 
by strings. 

The hedgehog did not move; there was no need. It 
was for the cat to make the next move — if she chose. 
He did not care. All things were one to him, and all 
the views which he presented to the world were points, 
a cheval-de-frise, a coiled ball of barbed wire, a living 
Gibraltar, what you will, but, anyway, practically im- 
pregnable ; and the beggar knew it. " He who believeth 
doth not make haste " — that seemed to be his motto, 
and he had, by the same token, a fine facility for with- 
standing a siege. 

He felt the cat, that cat who did not know hedgehogs, 
pat him tentatively. Then he heard her swearing softly 
and tensely at the painful result. She did not pat 
again — at least, only once, and, in spite of care, that 
hurt her worse than ever. Then she began growling, 



68 NINE POINTS OF THE LAW 

low and beastily — for all the cat tribe have a horrible 
growl ; you may have noticed it. Perhaps the hedge- 
hog smiled. I don't know. He knew that growl, an} T - 
how ; had heard it before — the anger of utter exaspera- 
tion. He was an exasperating brute, too, for he never 
said anything, only shut himself up, and let others do 
the arguing, if they were fools enough to do so. 

Suddenly he heard the growl stop. Followed a tense 
pause, during which he tightened his back-muscles under 
his spines, and tucked himself in, to meet any coming 
shock, more tightly than ever. Followed the pause a 
short warning hiss, jerked out almost in fright, it 
seemed — that cat's hiss that is only a bluff, and meant 
to imitate a snake — a sudden explosion of snarls, and 
a thud. A fractional silence, then a perfect boil-over 
of snarls, and thud upon thud. 

Now, our friend hedgehog was an old hand, and he 
had heard many and curious sounds take place out- 
side himself, so to speak; but, all the same, he was just 
tickled to death to know what, in claws and whiskers, 
was happening out there in the leering moonlight now; 
so much so, indeed, that at last he risked it, and took a 
furtive peep out of a chink in himself, as it were. And 
what he saw might have amazed him, if he had not been 
a hedgehog and scarcely ever amazed at anything. He 
just got a snapshot view of the cat's fine ringed tail 
whirling round and round as she balanced herself on the 
swerve, vanishing into the ghostly moonlight haze of the 
night ; and in front of him, close beside him, squatting, 
stare-eyed and phlegmatic, he saw the form of a big, 
gaunt, old doe-rabbit. And I think he knew what had 
happened. He seemed to, anyway, and remained rolled 
up. 



NINE POINTS OF THE LAW 69 

Rabbits arc thoughtless, headstrong, headlong, 
hopeless, helpless cowards as a race and a rule. " The 
heart of a rabbit," they say in France, speaking of a 
coward. But all races and rules have exceptions. 
Occasionally the exceptions are old buck-rabbits, who 
know a thing or two ; but more often they are old doe- 
rabbits with young. And, mark you, from the point of 
view of those wild-folk, there may be easier rough hand- 
fuls to tackle than old doe-rabbits with young. This 
one had simply streaked out of the night from nowhere 
— and behind — and knocked the cat flying before she 
knew. Then, ere ever the feline could gather her wits, 
the old doe had descended upon her with an avalanche 
of blows — punches they were with the forefeet, all over 
the head and the nose, where a cat hates to be hit — 
and all so swiftly, so irresistibly, that that cat had 
never been given a chance to consider before she was 
stampeded into the night. It was the silver tabb}^s 
first experience of Mrs. Rabbit doing the devoted- 
mother act, and, by the look of her — tail only — and 
the speed at which she was going, it appeared most 
likely that it would be her last. 

Meanwhile the old doe-rabbit sat there in the moon- 
light as immovable and impassive as a Buddha, and the 
hedgehog, peering at her, guessed that the time to unroll 
was not yet. He knew that it would hurt any one to 
attack him ; the cat knew it ; all rabbits in their senses 
knew it; but was that mother-rabbit in her senses? He 
concluded to lie low and remain a fortress, therefore. 

Then, after waiting about five minutes, as if she knew 
that cats sometimes steal back, the old doe-rabbit came 
to a " stop " quite close to the hedgehog, and went in. 
She remained there some time, during which a fox came 



yo NINE POINTS OF THE LAW 

by and sniffed at the hedgehog, but was quite wise as to 
the foolishness of doing more ; and a deadly, curved- 
backed, flat-headed little murderer of a stoat galloped 
by, and sniffed too, but was no bigger fool than the 
fox, and went his way. 

Both missed the " stop " by about two yards, though 
I don't know what would have happened if they had 
found it. Digging and death in the former case, and 
battle and blood in the latter, perhaps. But no matter, 
they passed on their unlawful occasions; and half-an- 
hour after the going of the stoat the old doe-rabbit 
came out, and dissolved into the moon-haze. 

Then the hedgehog came out, too — of himself, and 
— well, dissolved into the " stop." 

What happened in there it was too dark to see, but 
not to hear; and what one could hear was — pitiful. 
He was there some time, for your hedgehog rarely hur- 
ries ; and when he came out again, his little pig's eyes 
gleaming red under their spincd cowl, it was with the 
same snuffling, softly grunting deliberation with which 
he had gone in ; but the pale moon, that showed the 
gleam in his eyes, showed also blood on his snout, and 
on the bristles of his forefeet, blood. 

Then, slowly, snorting, sniffing very audibly — as 
loud as a big dog often does — grunting softly in an 
undertone, as if talking to himself, he departed, rustling 
through the grass, leaving an irregular winding track 
behind in the dew and the gossamer, as he searched, 
eternally searched, for food. 

The hedgehog moved through the night as if he owned 
it and had no fear of anything on earth; but many, it 
would seem, had cause to fear him. He turned and 
snorted, and snatched up a slug. Three \cvy quick 



NINE POINTS OF THE LAW 71 

and suggestive — quite audible — scrunches, and it was 
gone. He described a half-circle, sniffing very loudly, 
and chopped up a grub. He paused for a fraction to 
nose out a beetle, and disposed of it with the same 
quick three or four chopping scrunches. (It sounded 
rather like a child eating toast-crusts.) He continued, 
always wandering devious, always very busy and ant- 
like, always snorting loudly ; grabbed another beetle, 
and then a worm — all by scent, apparently — and 
reached the hedge-ditch, where, in the pitch-darkness, 
he could still be heard snorting and scrunching hapless 
insects, slugs, and worms at scarcely more than one- 
minute intervals. And he never stopped. He seemed 
to have been appointed by Nature as a sort of machine, 
a spiked " tank," to sniff tirelessly about, reducing the 
surplus population of pests, as if he were under a curse 
— as, indeed, the whole of the great order of little 
beasts to which he belonged, the Insectivora, are — 
which, afflicting him with an insatiable hunger, drove 
him everlastingly to hunt blindly through the night for 
gastronomic horrors, and to eat 'em. Anyway, he did 
it, and in doing it seemed to make himself worthy of 
the everlasting thanks and protection of the people who 
owned that land — thanks which to date he had never 
received. 

Strange to say, he never stopped of his own free-will, 
though he was stopped: once when he walked up to a 
man kneeling — and he was a poacher — and did not 
see him till, if I may so put it, the man coughed, when 
he ran like winkie into the hedge, and promptly became 
a ball for ten minutes ; and once when he came upon a 
low, long, sinister, big, and grunting shadow, which 
again, if I be allowed the term, he did not see, though 



72 NINE POINTS OF THE LAW 

quite close, till he heard it grunt, when he instantly 
jerked himself into a ball on the spot and in the open. 
In both cases it seemed, on the face of it, more as if he 
had scented, rather than had either seen or heard, the 
dangers, and in both cases he had come within two 
yards of them — though they were not hidden — be- 
fore scenting, seeing, or hearing them, whichever he did 
do. 

Now, books and men have said that friend hedgehog 
fears only two tilings : gypsies and badgers — who eat 
him. I should not be surprised at anything the " gyp " 
did ; nor, to this day, can we stake much on our knowl- 
edge of the secret badger ; but this badger, at any rate, 
seemed to know nothing of books and men. He was 
delving for roots when the hedgehog cast up out of the 
night and jumped him to " attention " by his loud sniffs 
— much like a big dog's, I said. Thereafter, however, 
when our prickly friend was represented as a ball only, 
and was as silent as the grave, the badger took no 
further notice of him, beyond keeping one eye — the 
weather eye — upon him, and treating him to a low 
growl, or curse, truly, from time to time. 

The hedgehog, however, once there, did not seem 
keen upon unrolling and exposing himself till the badger 
had gone, which it did finally, vanishing so suddenly 
and unexpectedly into the dark as almost to seem to 
have been a ghost. And after some minutes the hedge- 
hog straightened out, and ate his way — one can call 
it nothing else — to the hedge. Here he came upon a 
wounded mouse, complaining into the night in a little, 
thin voice, because its back was broken, and it could 
not return to its hole. It was a harvest mouse, re- 
joicing in the enormous weight of 4.7 grains and a, 



NINE POINTS OF THE LAW 73 

length of 57 mm., but with as much love of life and 
fear of death as an elephant. Heaven knows what had 
smitten it ! Perhaps it was one of the very few who 
just escape the owl, or who foil that scientific death, the 
weasel, at the last moment — but no matter. The re- 
sult was the same — death, anyway. 

The hedgehog saw its eyes shining like stars in a 
little jet of moonlight, and I fear the hedgehog slew far 
less adroitly than the owl, and not nearly so scientific- 
ally as the weasel ; but he slew, none the less, and he did 
that which he did. 

From thence we find our hedgehog, still wandering 
devious, but with always a direction, just as an ant has, 
heading his way down-ditch to a farm, and all the way 
he ate — beetles mostly, but with slugs and worms 
thrown in. 

Now, those of the wild-folk who approach the farm, 
even by night, do so with their life in their paws, and 
most of them know it. Far, far safer would it be 
to remain in wood or field-hedge, gorse-patch or 
growing crop. Yet they go, like the adventurers of 
old. 

First of all, if he approached by ditch, before getting 
to the farm proper, the hedgehog knew that he must 
pass the entrenchments of the rat-folk, and that alone 
was enough to put off many, for the rat-folk are no 
longer strictly wild, and, wild or tame, are hated with 
that cordiality that only fear can impose. I don't 
know that our hedgehog was given to fearing anything 
very much. He came of a brave race, and one cursed, 
moreover, with a vile, quick temper, more than likely to 
squash in its incipient stage any fear that might 
threaten to exist ; but he did most emphatically detest 



74 NINE POINTS OF THE LAW 

rats, except to eat them — a compliment which the rats 
■would have returned, if they had got a chance. 

As a matter of fact, it is unlikely that Prickles — 
for such was the name of our hedgehog — would have 
gone that risky way, traveled so unhealthily far, left his 
more or less — mostly less — safe home wood at all, 
had it not been that it is sometimes with hedgehogs as 
it is with men — in the warm seasons — their fancy 
turns to thoughts of love. Prickles's fancy had so 
tinned, not lightly, for he was of an ancient and ante- 
diluvian race, heavy in thought, but certainly to love. 
And love, I want you to realize, in the wild, or anywhere 
else, for the matter of that, is the very devil. "Unite 
and multiply; there is no other law or aim than love," 
one great savant despairingly asserts IS Nature's cry, 
and adds that she mutters to herself under her breath, 
" and exist afterwards if you can. That is no concern 
of mine." 

To be precise. Trickles, who did more business with 
his nose than all the rest of his organs put together, was 
following a love-trail. A lady hedgehog, a flapper un- 
doubtedly, and beautiful — all loves are beautiful in 
imagination — had passed that way. Why that 1111- 
healthful way, Heaven knew; but, allowing for the 
capriciousness of the sex, and mad because in love, 
Prickles followed, slowly, deliberately, heavily, as be- 
fitted one descended from one of the oldest races on 
earth. 

The air was heavy with the scent of may and of 
honeysuckle, and his way was a green-gold — silver 
where the moon cascaded down the hedge — and blue- 
Mack bridal-path, arched with scented swords, strewn 
with pink and rose and cream and white confetti of 



NINE POINTS OF THE LAW 75 

blossom. But he only saw and smelt one thing, and 
that, those who have known hedgehogs intimately will 
agree, is not like unto the scent of any blossom. 

Prickles was ruminating anciently upon these things, 
possibly, and others, as he came down the trench — 
ditch, I mean — when the cry smote him. It smote 
everything — the filtered silence of the wonderful, 
tranquil night, the pale moon half-light, the furtive 
rustling shadows that stopped rustling, the wonderful 
breathing pulse of growing vegetation. And Prickles 
stopped as abruptly as if it had smitten him on his 
nose, too. He heard that, at any rate, whatever might 
have been hinted about the value of his ears elsewhere. 

There was no doubt about that cry, no possible 
shadow of doubt whatever — it was a cry of extreme 
distress, a final, despairing S.O.S., flung out to the 
night in the frantic hope that one of the same species 
would hear and help. 

Several night-foraging wild-folk have S.O.S. signals 
of their own, but none like this. It was not a rabbit's 
cry, for bunn3 T 's signal is thin and child-like ; nor a> 
hare's, for puss's last scream is like bunny's, only more 
so ; nor a stoat's, for that is instinct with anger as well 
as pain ; nor a cat's, for that thrills with hate ; nor an 
owl's, for that is ghostly ; nor a fox's, for Reynard is 
dumb then; nor a rat's, for that is gibbering and 
devilish; nor a mouse's, for that is weak and helpless. 
Then what? And why had it touched up Prickles as if 
with a live wire? It was perhaps the rarest S.O.S. 
signal of all heard in the wild, or one of the rarest, the 
peculiar, high, chattering, pig-like, savage tremolo of a 
hedgehog booked for some extra deathly form of death. 
And Prickles — naturally he knew it. 



76 NINE POINTS OF THE LAW 

It came from straightaway down the ditch ; from 
ahead, where Prickles had been heading for ; from the 
farm, and Heaven knew what it portended ! Perhaps, 
too, Prickles could tell a lady hedgehog's S.O.S. from 
that of a gentleman of the same breed ; or, perhaps — 
but how do I know? He certainly acted that way. 

Prickles waited the one-fifth part of an instant, to 
listen and locate. Then he got going, and provided one 
astonishment. Till then he had seemed slow as the 
times he had descended from — like a rhinoceros. But, 
like a rhino, he proved that he could shift some when 
hustled. He did. It looked like suddenly releasing a 
clockwork toy wound up to breaking-point. His short 
legs gave this impression, and his next-to-no-neck, giv- 
ing him a look of rigidity, assisted it. He did not run 
so much as rush, and his spines and bristles, coming 
low on either side in an overhang, so to speak, like an 
armored car, made him rustle and scuffle tremendously. 
Three rabbits doing the same act, or five cats, could 
scarce have made more row than he did. 

It was not, however, so much the fact that Prickles 
had gone that was so noticeable as the fact that he had 
arrived. His arrival seemed to follow his going as one 
slide follows another on a screen. One would never 
have believed such quickness of him ; nor, as a matter of 
fact, do I think he would have believed it of himself; 
but — well, love is a mighty power, and makes folks do 
some strange things. 

What he found was two ditch-banks, pock-marked 
with the untidy dug-outs of the rat-people, smelling 
ratty, and looking worse, one original ray of moon- 
light lighting the beaten ditch between. In the moon- 
light one young female hedgehog, who may have been 



NINE POINTS OF THE LAW 77 

pretty by hedgehog standards, but was now pretty by 
none, and five rats, frankly beastly, very busy indeed 
with that same hedgehog. They must have caught that 
young lady of the spikes " napping " — a rare thing. 
Yet, allowing for the fact that she was in love — with 
love and nothing else, so far — and careless, or allow- 
ing that she may have mistaken the unclean ones mo- 
mentarily, she may have given them one brief half- 
instant. And it doesn't do to give a rat even the half 
of a half-instant. If you do, he has got you, or you 
haven't got him. 

Apparently they had pretty well got her before she 
could quite roll up, and in a half-rolled-up condition 
she was doing her best to meet the jabs of five pairs of 
gnawing, cold-chisel, incisor, yellow-rats' teeth at once. 
To time, apparently, she had not been successful in the 
attempt — you could see the dark stains of blood glisten 
in the moonlight, and the end was certain, on the face 
of it. 

Prickles, however, was a new factor that had got to 
short-circuit that end, and Prickles didn't wait to 
meditate prehistorically that time. He came. He 
came full tilt into the midst of the melee like — well, 
like a clockwork toy still, that couldn't stop. Only he 
did stop, against the biggest rat of all, ducking his 
head, and jerking forward his shoulder-muscles, and 
spines, with a sort of a thrust over his head, and a noise 
like a pair of expiring bellows ; and the prickles hit 
home. 

That rat removed about one foot in one bound in 
one-fortieth of a second, and he let rip one squeal in the 
process that sent away every other rat into the nearest 
available hole as if it had been fired there from a spring. 



78 NINE POINTS OF THE LAW 

Then the lady hedgehog took the Heaven-sent oppor- 
tunity to complete her rolling-up completely, and 
Prickles took his own created opportunity to roll up 
almost more completely, and — well, they were rolled 
up into two balls, you see, and there is nothing more 
to be said about them. The rats did that, but it was 
all they did, except hurt their noses presently, and 
delicate, pink, hand-like fore-paws, and make 'em bleed 
on prickles. They were very angry indeed, those un- 
speakable ones — very angry ; but it didn't make any 
difference to the hedgehogs. They were there ; they 
were rolled up ; they were together. What could make 
any difference after that? And at last, when the rats 
gave them up as a very bad job, they went away to- 
gether, and that's all there is to say. Together clinches 
it, you understand. 



V 
PHARAOH 



Upon a day Hawkley came to the district, and took 
up his abode in a cottage of four rooms. He " did " 
for himself. Every housekeeper will know what " did " 
for himself means. But he did for himself in another 
way also. He came to read up for an exam. He told 
everybod} 7 this, which was one reason why he would be 
seen at ungodly hours, when no one was about, going 
to and from lonely spots, with a pair of blue glasses on 
his nose, a book under one arm, and a walking-stick 
with a silver band and a tassel — he was always careful 
to display the silver band and the tassel — under the 
other. 

Then Nemesis descended upon him. 

He was caught by Colonel Lymington's head-keeper 
on Colonel Lymington's most strictly preserved wild- 
bird sanctuary, shooting certain rare birds — many 
rare birds. Now, the colonel prided himself on his 
sanctuary, and upon the number of rare birds he had 
living therein, and the colonel was wroth. Hawkley 
had, in fact, ruined the sanctuary, and taken or slain 
pretty well every other bird worth having in the place, 
so that five years would not make good the harm he had 
done. Moreover, it was shown in the evidence that 

79 



80 PHARAOH 

Hawkley had been able to accomplish his work by aid of 
a folding pocket-rifle with a silencer on, and his cat — 
especial^ the cat, whose name was Pharaoh. 

No words of the keeper's could be found sufficiently 
to revile that cat. Indeed, the head-keeper went speech- 
less, and nearly had epilepsy, in trying to describe it to 
the Court, and if it had done only one-half the things 
that the keeper asserted, it must have been a very 
remarkable beast indeed ; the magistrate said so. In 
consequence Hawkley got rather heavily fined, and 
went. He went more quickly than was expected, be- 
cause the police got a telephone message from the police 
of another district — several other districts, I think — 
to say that he was " wanted " for precisely the same 
game there ; and Hawkley must have expected this, for 
he walked out of the court with a grin on his face, and 
was no more seen. 

So quickly did he go that he had no time to take the 
cat. He left it at home in the cottage — which shows 
that he must have been badly scared, for such a cat 
must have been worth a lot to a collector's agent, such 
as Hawkley was. But perhaps he left it by way of 
revenge. I do not know. Anyway, there it was in his 
cottage, asleep on the sofa before the fire — just as 
Hawkley, at the invitation of the authorities, had left 
it that morning. 

It was about five o'clock in the afternoon when the 
cat, Pharaoh, woke up, and transformed himself in- 
stantly from deep sleep to strained alertness, in that 
way which is peculiar to the children of the wild, but 
has been lost by their domestic degenerates. The sun 
was shining full in at the little diamond-paned window. 



PHARAOH 81 

The window was open, and a late fly of metallic hue 
was shooting about with a pinging noise, like the twang 
of some instrumental string. But neither fly, nor sun, 
nor the tick of the little clock on the mantelpiece had 
awakened the cat. It was the click of the little front- 
gate latch. 

The cat — the pupils of his eyes like vertical slits in 
green-yellow stone — gave one quick look at, and 
through, the open window. He had the impression, 
framed in the window, of a bobbing, black, " square " 
bowler hat — not often seen these days — and a red 
face with small eyes, and a sticking-out beard of ag- 
gressiveness. This was no Hawkley. The cat knew it, 
as he knew, probably, the alien tread. Hawkley had a 
white, clean-shaven face, and big eyes — the eyes that 
an animal may love and trust. Possibly the cat knew 
even the profession of him who came that way so softly 
and alone in the still afternoon. Anyway, he acted as 
if he did. 

Like a snake, and with rather less noise, Pharaoh slid 
off the sofa and to the door leading into the scullery. 
For a moment he stopped, looking back over his shoul- 
der, one paw uplifted, body drooping on bent legs, 
inscrutable, fierce eyes staring. Then he was gone. 

I don't know how he went. He just seemed to fade 
out in the frame of the doorway and into the shadowed 
coolth of the scullery like a dissolving picture. 

A pause followed, while the little clock on the mantel- 
piece ticked hurriedly, as if anxious to get on and pass 
over an awkward moment. 

Came then the click of the front-door latch, the fling- 
ing open of the door wide, the bar-like gleam of hastily 



82 PHARAOH 

raised gun-barrels in the new flood of light, and — 
silence. Only the one or two late flies " pinged," while 
the little clock fairly raced. 

The tall, uncompromising figure of the head-keeper 
was standing in the doorway, with a double-barreled 
12-bore gun half-raised. 

He stood there a moment with his dog, bent a little, 
peering in. He had come to find " that there pesky 
cat." And in this, perhaps, he showed more sense than 
most people gave him credit for. Apparently, he had 
seen enough to know that the cat was quite unlike any 
ordinary cat — and cats of any kind are bad enough — 
and certainly he guessed that the cat under control of 
its master was one, and away from that questionable 
influence likely to be another, and very much worse, 
calamity. 

The keeper searched that cottage from chimney to 
doorstep. No cat there. His dog did not, as might 
have been expected, help him in this search. Indeed, 
his dog, he now discovered, had vanished — had, in fact, 
gone out at the back-door and cleared off. 

Meanwhile the cat was, for his sins, being horribly 
pricked by the holly-hedge through which he was sliding. 
He growled under +he punishment. Ordinary domestic 
cats do not, as a rule, growl in such cases, though they 
may " swear." 

Once through the hedge, the cat dropped into the 
ditch on the other side, turned to his right, and galloped 
up it. It ran upwards, skirting a sloping wet field, to 
a dark, damp, black wood, as woods always are that 
stand on cold clay and have much evergreen growth. 
They remind one of a wet, chill rhododendron forest of 
Tibet. 



PHARAOH 83 

The cat's gallop was in itself peculiar, loose, long, his 
head low, his forepaws straight, his hindlegs trailing out 
behind. So does the tiger gallop across the jungle 
glade when the beaters rouse him. 

There were other things peculiar about Pharaoh also, 
now that one had him on the move and could see. He 
was, perhaps, a fraction big for his kind ; his coat was 
yellowish, fading beneath, with " faint pale stripes " 
well marked on the sides ; his tail was long, and oddly 
slender and " whippy," ringed faintly to the black tip ; 
his fur was short and harsh, quite unlike that of a 
domestic cat, and the expression of his eyes was one of 
permanent, unsleeping fierceness. 

Once he stopped and stared back, and in the pause 
which followed one could distinctly hear a faint but 
rapidly increasing drumming sound following his trail 
up the ditch. And least of all beasts had that cat 
delusions. He turned and galloped on. The keeper's 
dog was of an independent turn of mind. He had 
quietly run that cat's trail, forgetting that, in the long- 
run, dogs are not fitted to maneuver independently, and 
may suffer if they do so. You see him flying up the 
trail, square nose to ground, tracking really very 
cleverly indeed, and with a fine amount of what hunts- 
men call " drive." 

He had overtaken Pharaoh before the hunted one 
could reach the wood. He realized it as he took the 
last bend in the ditch, when he saw a yellow streak rise 
under his nose, and bound, with all four legs stuck out 
quite straight, and claws spread abroad, like a rubber 
ball out of his path, avoiding his clumsy, murderous 
snap by an inch, and then felt it rebound right on to 
his back. 



84 PHARAOH 

The next few seconds were quite crowded, and that 
dog had the time of his life. 

Even an ordinary domestic " puss " can make won- 
derful havoc of a dog's back when once it gets there, 
and stays, as it does, like a burr, and this one could go 
a bit better than most; and when that dog at last got 
the cat's " leave to go," he went rather sooner than at 
once, proclaiming his misery aloud to all the world, so 
that his master, coming at that moment out of the back- 
door of the cottage, heard him afar off, and swore. 

As for the cat, he turned about, all bristling, and 
went too. He went straight up to, and through, the 
wood, disturbing in clouds the starlings, who had just 
come in to roost in the rhododendrons, so that they 
rose with a rushing of wings like the voice of a thunder- 
shower on forest leaves, and incidentally drenched the 
cat with a deluge of raindrops collected in the leaves 
as he raced through underneath. A lesser beast, it may 
be noted, would have climbed a tree, but Hawkley, I 
think, had convinced his cat of that folly when a man 
might be following up behind. 

Straight through the wood galloped Pharaoh, and 
into a stretch of age-old furze, or gorse, if you like, 
beyond. That showed strategy. The furze was a 
maze of a million spikes, and branches, and twisted, 
gnarled stems tough as wire-rope ; a wonderful place, 
all honeycombed with rabbit-runs ; a world unto itself. 

The cat moved on quickly into the heart of the furze, 
pausing every few strides to listen and glare round. 
Several times he sniffed the sickty grass and the carpet 
of dead spikes. 

Once or twice something moved ahead ; a branch was 
shaking as he came up, a blade of grass slowly righting 



PHARAOH 85 

itself, as if something that had been sitting upon it had 
but just stolen away. All round were hints of life, but 
no life was visible. It was as if the cat were moving 
through an army of ghosts. 

Then, in a flash, without any kind of hint or warning 
to prepare one for the unnerving contrast of the change, 
was war — raw, red war. 

There had come up a rabbit-run — a regular rabbit- 
turnpike — a creature. It was strikingly colored, 
that creature, and big — nearly three feet long, to be 
exact ; but it looked much bigger in the ghostly twilight 
— and yet till it was actually upon him he, even he, had 
failed to see it. 

Long, low r , bear-like, and burly, with claws caked with 
earth, gashed and bleeding on flank and shoulder it 
was, red-fanged and wild-eyed. It charged home upon 
Pharaoh without a second's pause, and with an obscene 
chatter that was unnerving to any one, let alone so 
highly strung a bag of tricks as a cat. 

Men and dogs had been besieging this badger in its 
den for twelve hours. It had in the end made a des- 
perate sortie, upset one man who had failed to grab its 
tail, run into and bitten another, and got clean away. 
Pharaoh was unfortunate in that he stood between the 
half-mad beast and another den for which it was making. 

There was no time to go back, no room to execute 
one of those beautiful lightning side-leaps which are 
the pride of all the cats, and less to spring into the 
air, a neat trick of the tribe which it has also perfected. 

The cat was cornered, and, being cornered, fought 
like — a cornered cat ! That is to say, an electrified 
devil. 

He reared up. He struck, pat ! pat ! right and left, 



86 PHARAOH 

with the terrible, rending, full stroke of his kind. He 
met open jaws with open jaws — you could hear fang 
clash against fang. He grabbed, scrunched, drew back, 
grabbed, scrunched again, as a lion will — for the cats 
neither hold fast like a weasel nor snap like a wolf. 
Then, as the full force of the charge and the weight of 
the enemy's body — some twenty-seven and a half 
pounds — took him, he hugged, round-arm fashion, with 
his talons, and, still grabbing and scrunching, rolled 
over backwards. 

Cat and badger turned into a ball — a parti-colored 
ball, very lively as to its center, and it whirled. Un- 
fortunately there was not much room to whirl in. That 
made things all the more grisly. You could almost see 
the grim skeleton shape of death, hovering over that 
growling, snarling, spitting, worrying, tearing, kicking, 
gnashing, scrunching, foaming, blood-flecked Catherine- 
wheel — almost see death, I say, bending down with 
upraised arm ready to strike. But death never struck. 

In an instant there came, sounding strangely hollow 
in that still, damp air of dusk, as though it were in a 
cave, the unmistakable noise of a deep, dry, hacking 
cough. Truly, it was nothing much — just a good old 
churchy and human cough. But it might have been a 
blast from the trumpet of the archangel Gabriel himself 
by the effect it had upon the two combatants. They 
shot apart like released electrified dust-atoms, and — 
pff ! — they were gone — wiped out. Like pricked 
bubbles, they had ceased to be. And neither gave any 
explanation. Being wild things, of course they 
wouldn't. 

The cough had only come from a laborer, who, pass- 
ing along a pathway through the furze, had heard the 



PHARAOH 87 

commotion, and stopped. He never saw anything, 
though lie crashed into the furze and hunted — he never 
saw any tiling, which was no wonder, seeing that he could 
hardly have selected a way to see less. The cat was 
four hundred yards away by that time, and goodness 
knows where the badger was — deep down in his den, 
one presumes. 

Later the cat slept, in a fortress of nature safe 
enough, surrounded by a hundred unseen sentries with 
brown jackets and white tails — rabbits, who would 
give him all the warning he required. 

11 

The lean night w T ind next evening came down, and 
day went out almost imperceptibly. Blackness grew 
under the furze caverns, and the last glimpse of the 
estuary faded away in a steely glimmer ; a brown ghost 
of an owl slid low over the spiked ramparts, and wings 
— the wings of fighting wild-duck coming up from the 
sea to feed — " spoke " like swords through the star- 
spangled blue-black canopy of heaven. 

The night-folk began to move abroad. You could 
hear them pass — now a faint rustle here, now a sur- 
reptitious " pad-pad " there. Once some bird-thing of 
the night cried out suddenly, very far away in the sky, 
" Keck ! keck ! " and w r as gone. 

It was not Pharaoh, however, that you would have 
heard move. None of the wild-folk could tell how at 
midnight he managed to land himself far out over the 
marsh unperceived. He was there — you must take my 
word for it — j ust two faintly luminous yellow-green 
lamps floating on the mist. 

Not many men knew their way across the marsh by 



88 PHARAOH 

day ; certainly not five even of the oldest wildfowlers 
could have got over safely by night. It was not man, 
therefore, that was causing the cat to melt into the 
short, salt grass, so closely that there was nothing of 
him left. Something else was coming his way. 

Along the edge of the dike it came — tall, thin, pale, 
ghostly, and — yes, I could have sworn it, though night 
does play odd tricks with the human eyesight — faintly 
phosphorescent. At least, it seemed to glow ever so 
dimly, like one that moves in a nearly burnt-out halo. 

Every yard or two it paused, that thing. Once there 
was a splash, as if some one were spearing fish and had 
missed. 

The cat moved rather less than an average stone. 
He knew that in the wild to be motionless is, in nine 
cases out of ten, to be invisible. The tenth case doesn't 
matter, because the creature that discovers it usually 
dies. Moreover, there was no cover to move to, and 
cover is the cat's trump card. 

Now, everything would have gone off all right if — 
well, if the cat hadn't been a cat, I suppose ; that is, 
if he had been able to stop the ceaseless twitching of the 
black tip of his tail. Tiger-hunters know that twitch- 
ing, and those who have stalked the lion will tell you 
of it, as also the sparrow on the garden wall, whose 
life may have been saved from somebody's pet " tabby " 
by that same twitching. It is a characteristic habit of 
the tribe, I take it. 

The luminous ghost-thing was close now. Heaven 
knows whether it saw that twitching then! I think so. 
It stopped, anyway, and became a pillar of stone. The 
cat, almost under it, fairly pressed himself into the 
grass. 



PHARAOH 89 

Then — whrrp ! 

Something shot through the air like a lance, and 
pinned that twitching tail-point to the ground. There 
had been no warning — nothing! Just that javelin 
from the ghost, and — the cat on his hindlegs, scream- 
ing like a stricken devil, clawing at the ghost, now re- 
vealed as a very big, long-legged bird which flapped. 
It flapped huge wings and danced a grotesque dance, 
and it smelt abominably, with the stench of ten fish- 
markets on a hot day. 

Then at last, the cat clawing and yelling the whole 
time, the bird's slow brain seemed to realize the mis- 
take. The javelin, which was its beak, was withdrawn 
from the protesting tail-tip hurriedly — to be driven 
through the cat's skull as a sheer act of necessary self- 
defense, I fancy. But the cat did not wait to see. 
Imagine the infamy, the absolute sacrilege, from a 
cat's point of view, of spitting a feline tail in that dis- 
gusting fashion. Why, if you only tread on one, you 
hear about it in five-tenths of the average second, 
and offend the supercilious owner for a month after- 
wards ! 

There was a vision, just a half-guessed vision, of our 
cat shooting straight upwards through the air, and 
outwards over the still w r aters of the dike ; there was a 
number one splash that set the reflected stars dancing, 
and the water-voles (" rats," if you like) bolting to 
their holes ; and there was the sighing " f rou-f rou- 
frou ! " of great wings as the big bird rose and fled 
majestically. There was the sucking gurgle and drip- 
drip of a furred body leaving the water on the far side, 
eyes that glared more hate than pen can set down, and 
a deep, low, malignant feline curse. That cat had 



90 PHARAOH 

swum the rest of the way over the dike which he could 
not jump. 

The bird was only a heron, and that does not sound 
much unless you are acquainted with the ways of the 
heron and all his beak implies. A heron is one of those 
birds that can fight at need, and — knows it. More- 
over, in his long beak, set on his steel-spring neck, he 
has a weapon of awful " piercefulness," and — knows 
that too. The bird is an example of armed defense. 

This one had merely been fishing for eels in that 
pessimistic way peculiar to all fishermen, and seeing the 
tail-tip waving in the grass, and nothing else, had mis- 
taken the same for his quarry. And this will be the 
easier to believe because we know, and probably the 
heron did also, that eels are given at times to overland 
journeys on secret errands of their own. 

The cat crawled away down the dike in offended 
silence. He was wet, and the only cat I ever knew who 
did not seem to be scandalized past speech at the fact. 
Indeed, he went farther. He came upon a ripple and a 
dot, some fifty yards farther on, which to the initiated 
such as he, represented a water-vole ("rat," if you 
will) swimming. 

Then, before you could take your pipe from your 
mouth to exclaim, the water-vole was not swimming. 
He was squealing in a most loud and public-spirited 
fashion from between Pharaoh's jaws, and it was the cat 
who was swimming. He had just taken a flying leap 
from the bank and landed full upon the dumbfounded 
water-vole — splash ! Then he swam calmly ashore and 
dined, all wet and cold. Now, what is one to say of 
such a cat? 



PHARAOH 91 



in 



Long did the keepers, in Colonel Lymington's woods 
and along the hedges, search with dog and gun for 
Pharaoh, and many traps did they set. The dogs truly 
found a cat — two cats, and the guns stopped them, but 
one had a nice blue ribbon round his neck, and the 
other had kittens ; the traps were found by one cat — ■ 
and that was the pet of the colonel's lady — one stoat, 
one black " Pom " — and that was the idol of the par- 
son's daughter — and one vixen — and she was buried 
secretly and at night — but Pharaoh remained where he 
had chosen to remain, and he remained also an enigma. 

Then the colonel's rare birds began to evaporate in 
real earnest. Hawkley's little efforts at depleting them 
were child's-play to those of Pharaoh that followed, 
although, of course, Pharaoh himself did not know, or 
care the twitch of a whisker, whether the birds he slew 
were rare or not. 

Now, if there was one thing more than another about 
which the colonel prided himself in his bird sanctuary, 
it was the presence of the bittern. I don't know where 
the bittern came from, nor does the colonel. Perhaps 
the head-keeper knew. Bitterns migrate sometimes, 
but — well, that keeper was no fool, and knew his 
master's soft spot. 

It was a night or two later that Pharaoh surmounted 
the limit, so to speak, and " sprung all mines in quick 
succession." He had been curled up all day in his 
furze fortress, that vast stretch of prickly impene- 
trability which, even if a dog had been found with pluck 
enough to push through to its heart, would still, in its 
massed and tangled boughs, have given a cat with 



92 PHARAOH 

Pharaoh's fighting prowess full chance to defy any dog. 

He was beautifully oblivious of the stir his previous 
doings had kicked up, and of the winged words the 
colonel had used to the head-keeper ; of the traps set all 
about, of the gins doubled and trebled in the wood and 
round the park, and of the under-keepers who, with 
guns and tempting baits, took up their positions to wait 
for him as night fell. 

No one seemed to have suspected the furze a mile 
away, and still less the marsh and the coverless bleak 
shore of the estuary, as his home. Indeed, no one looks 
for a cat on a wind-whipped marsh when woods are 
near at all. Yet this open, wet country seemed to be a 
peculiarly favorite hunting-ground of Pharaoh's. 

It was a night of rain-squalls and moonlit streaks 
when Pharaoh, wandering devious among the reeds, first 
became aware of the bittern, in the shape of reptilian 
green eyes steadily regarding him from the piebald 
shadows. Possibly the cat's whiskers first hinted at 
some new presence by reason of the " ancient and fish- 
like smell" which pervaded this precise reed jungle. 

Pharaoh stopped dead. Pharaoh, with cruel, thin 
ears pressed back, sank like a wraith into the soft 
ground. Pharaoh ceased to be even a grayish-yellow, 
smoky something, and became nothing but eyes — eves 
floating and wicked. A domestic cat, after one frozen 
interval, would have crept away from the foe it could 
not fathom, but Pharaoh had other blood in his veins. 

To begin with, he was wondering what manner of 
beast the owner of those saurian-like orbs might be. 
To go on with, he was hungry, and — smelt fish. But 
though he was looking full at the big bird, he could not 



PHARAOH 93 

see it, which is the bittern's own private little bit of 
magic. 

Nature has given him a coat just like a bunch of dried 
reeds and the -shadows between, and he does the rest by 
standing with his head stuck straight up and as still as 
a brass idol. Result — invisibility. 

None know how long those two sought to " outfreezc " 
the " freezer," while the rain-showers came up and 
passed hissing, and the moon played at hide-and-seek. 
None knew when Pharaoh, flat as a snake, first began 
that deadly, silent circling, which was but acting in 
miniature the ways of the lion. None knew, either, at 
what point of bittern first begun to sink and sink, till 
he crouched, and puffed, his neck curved on his back 
like a spring ready set, his beak, like a sharpened 
assegai, upright. 

Only the short-eared owl, with his wonderful eyes, 
beheld Pharaoh make his final rush ; watched that living 
spring sprung quick as light, shooting out straight at 
the cat's glaring e} 7 es, and saw — greatest miracle of 
all the lot — Pharaoh dodge his head aside in the 
twentieth of a second, and blink, letting the blow that 
spelt death whiz by. 

And only those same owl's ears — sharpest of all the 
ears of the wild — heard the diabolical yell of Pharaoh 
as the long, sharp beak pierced through the loose skin 
of his shoulders, and, thanks to that same looseness, 
came out again an inch or two farther on, transfixing 
him ; or listened to the devilish noise of the " worry," as 
the cat turned in agony on himself and buried his fangs 
where he could behind those expressionless green rep- 
tilian eyes ; or caught the stupendous flurry and whirl 



94 PHARAOH 

of wings and fur and gripping claws and scaly legs, as 
a cloud put out the moon and darkness fell with silence, 
like the falling curtain that ends a play. 

The very last pale rays of a watery setting sun slid 
bar-like through the cottage window, and fell, twirling, 
aslant the floor. 

A late spider had spun a web across the fireplace, and 
the one last fly that always lingers sat in the sunbeam. 
It was Hawkley's cottage, dismantled and derelict. 

Something like a furry round hassock, lying motion- 
less in a far corner, moved at the sound of rain, and 
lifted a round head with round eyes that glared with so 
terrible an expression that one caught one's breath. 
There was blood — dried blood — by the furry shape, 
and drops of dried blood across the floor from the win- 
dow in the next room, that it had been nobody's busi- 
ness to shut. 

The day went out in gloom and howling rain-rushes. 
Darkness took possession of the room. And — the 
gate cUclccd. 

Truly, it might only have been the wind, but — 
Pharaoh was on his feet in a flash, growling, and there 
was a glint of green-yellow light as his eyes whipped 
round. 

Followed a pause. Then, in a lull, once, twice, the 
unmistakable crunch of a shod foot on gravel. 

Another pause. Pharaoh was crouching close now, 
trembling from head to foot. 

" Pharaoh ! Pharaoh ! Pharaoh, old cat, are — 
are you in there? " 

The voice, strained and husky, came in at the open 
window. In the last lingering afterglow of dying day, 



PHARAOH 95 

a face, haggard and set, showed there, framed in the 
lead casement. 

" Phar — Ah ! " 

Pharaoh was up. Pharaoh had given a strange, 
coaxing litle cry, such as a she-cat gives to her kittens. 
Pharaoh, lame and stiff, but with tail straight as a 
poker, was running to the window in the next room, was 
up on the sill, was rubbing against and caressing the 
haggard face like a mad thing. 

There was a long, tense pause, broken only by a con- 
tinuous purring. Then the creaking sound as of the lid 
of a wicker basket being opened. The purring ceased. 
The creaking came again, as if the lid were being shut. 
There came the crunch once more of stealthy shod feet 
on gravel, the click of the gate, and — silence ! 

Hawkley had come for, and found, his cat. 



VI 
THE CRIPPLE 

It was graduall} T getting colder and colder as he flew, 
till at last, in a wonderful, luminous, clear, moonlit 
sunset, when day passed, lingering almost impercep- 
tibly, into night, the wind fixed in the north, and a hard 
white frost shone on the glistening roofs — far, far 
below. 

Up there, at the three-thousand or four-thousand feet 
level, where he was flying, the air was as clear and 
sparkling as champagne, and as still as the tomb. If 
he had been passing over the moon instead of over the 
earth, the effect would have been something like it, 
perhaps. 

He was only a thrush, Turdus philomclus the song- 
ster, but big and dull and dark for his kind, and lie had 
come from — well, behind him, all shimmering and rest- 
less in the moonlight, like a fountain-basin full of 
quicksilver, lay the North Sea ; ahead and beneath lay 
England; and across that sea, three hundred miles, as I 
count it, at the very least, to the lands of melting snow, 
he was going when late cold weather had caught him 
and warned him to come back. And alone? No, sirs, 
not quite. Ahead, just visible, blurredly — a little 
phantom form rose and fell on the magic air; behind, 
another ; on his right, a third — all thrushes, flving 

96 






THE CRIPPLE 97 

steadily westward in silence ; and there may have been 
a few more that could not be seen, or there may not. 

His crop, as were the crops of the others, was per- 
fectly empty. Indeed, he appeared to prefer traveling 
in ballast that way. But his eyes shone, and his wing- 
strokes, with little pauses of rigidity between, such as 
many birds take — only one doesn't notice it much — 
were strong and sure. 

Once a large-winged, smudged shape, making no 
sound as it slipped across the heavens, came flapping 
almost up to him, peering this way and that at him 
and his companions, with amber flaming eyes set in a 
cat-like, oval face. The thrush's heart gave a great 
jump, and seemed threatening to choke him, for that 
shape — and it howled at him suddenly, in a voice 
calculated to make strong men jump — was death of 
the night, otherwise a short-eared owl. 

But a gun went " boomp ! " with that thick, damp 
sort of sound that smacks of black powder, somewhere 
down on earth, and a huge " herd " of green plover, 
alias peewits, which are lapwings, rose, as if blown up 
by an explosion, to meet them, their thousand wings 
flickering in the frost-haze like a shower of confetti, and 
the owl was so disconcerted by the disturbance that he 
dropped back into the night whence he came, as one 
who falls into a sea. 

Then suddenly the thrush — all the thrushes, indeed 
— tipped tails, and flew downward — offering no ex- 
planation to help one to understand why — till they 
dropped, each one entirely on his own hook, apparently, 
in or about some gardens, as if they had tumbled out 
of the sky ; and our thrush, in twenty seconds, had 
slipped into some apple-trees, and thence to some 



98 THE CRIPPLE 

laurels round a shed, and — was asleep ! 
asleep." Out of the starry sky, down, in under, and 
asleep — all without emotion, and like a machine. 
Now, what is one to make of such a bird? 

He did not see, or, more correctly, did not appear to 
see — for I do not know what he saw and what he pre- 
tended not to see, really — the lean, lithe, long, low 
weasel that passed, climbing and sniffing, beneath him 
— within six inches — possibly scenting out a rat. He 
did not hear, or show that he heard, the blackbird — 
she was rusty, dark brown, as a matter of actual fact — 
scream, a piercing and public-spirited scream, when the 
very big claws of a little, round, spotted-feathered ball 
with wings, like a parody of a cherub — but men call 
it a little owl, really — closed upon her and squeezed, 
or pierced, out her life. He did not feel, or let on 
that he felt, the branches gently sway as two eyes, 
glinting back the light of the moon — eyes which were 
the property of a " silver tabby " female cat — floated 
among the twigs, looking for him, him most certainly, 
whom she seemed faintly to smell, but never saw. 

These things represented tense moments dotted 
through hours of cold, dark silence, and the blue-black 
dome of night arched, and the moon drifted, all in rigid, 
cold, and appalling stillness. 

Then the wind changed, and our thrush awoke to a 
" muggy " day, under a soaked, cotton-wool, gray sky, 
all sodden with streaming showers of rain. And, by 
that token alone, he must have known that he was in 
England. No other climate is capable of such crazy, 
unwarned, health-trying changes. He had come in an 
icy, practically petrified silence. He left in a steam- 
ing, swishing, streaming gale. 



THE CRIPPLE 



99 



But that was not before he had been down to scratch 
like a fowl among the dead leaves under the privet- 
hedge for grubs, who " kidded " themselves that they 
were going to be fine, flashing insects next summer. He 
also prospected a snail or two, and broke through their 
fortifications by hammering the same upon a stone. 
And, by some magic process that looked akin to the 
way in which some men divine water, he divined a worm 
out of seemingly bare earth. It was there, too, and it 
came up, not joyfully, but tugged, to be hammered 
and shaken into something not too disgustingly alive to 
be swallowed. 

Then, while a robin mounted to a spruce-spire and 
acted as Job's comforter to all the birds of the garden 
by singing — ah, so plaintively and sweetly ! -7- of the 
dismal days of frost and snow, he " preened " — i.e. 
went over and combed every feather, and tested and 
retested, cleaned and recleaned, each vital quill. Then, 
in one single, watery, weak stab of apology for sun- 
shine, on the top of a fowl-shed, he surrendered himself 
to what, in wild-bird land, is known as the " sunning 
reaction," which really consists of giving body and 
mind utterly to the sun and complete rest. 

And then he left. 

Now, it was no chance that he left. Birds don't do 
business that way. To you or me, that location and 
its climate would have seemed as good for him to " peg 
out a claim " in as any other. He knew better. Some- 
thing — Heaven alone knows what — within him told 
him what was coming. He had the power to take a 
draft on the future, and by that means to save himself 
— if he could. Wherefore he flew on southward — 
always south. 



ioo THE CRIPPLE 

And six hours after he had gone, the wind swung 
like a weather-cock, swung and stopped at northeast, 
and frost began to grip that garden in an iron fist that 
threatened to squeeze the life out of every living thing 
in it, and the sky hung like the lid of a lead box. 

The thrush flew, with a few halts, practically all day 
and well into the night, and the northeast wind and the 
Frost King chased him south. 

He roosted in a great fastness of age-old holly-bushes 
within a wood, whose branches were packed with his 
relations — redwings, thrushes, and blackbirds, and 
also starlings — all tired out, all booked for the south. 

Some woods seem to hold a curse of gloom. One 
cannot say why. And this was one of them. And the 
tawny owl that nobody saw but everybody heard, and 
the white stoat that everybody saw and nobody heard, 
and the amorous dog-fox with the cruel bark that every- 
body saw and heard, did not, taken together or singly, 
add to the gayety of the scene. 

The thrush was just ahead of the cold w r hen he went 
to roost in pouring rain. In the night, however, the 
cold had overtaken him, and the thousand-jeweled 
beauty of frost-flakes flashed to his waking eye. 

He was numbed and puffed out and peevish, and dis- 
inclined to move, but anything was better than sticking 
about in this roosting-place, this casual ward and clear- 
ing-house of the wild. The keen starlings were already 
off, swinging away, regiment by regiment, with a fine, 
bold rush of wings ; the blackbirds were dotting the 
glades ; the redwings were slipping " weeping " away, to 
find soft fields to mope in ; and the pigeon host — what 
was left alive of it after diphtheria had taken its toll — 
had streamed onwards, heading southwest. 



THE CRIPPLE 101 

Tardus philomclus spelt L-u-c-k for our friend that 
morn, for he had not prospected two hundred yards 
when he came on a place where a vagrant " sounder " of 
half-grown, domestic, unringed pigs had been canvass- 
ing the wood for beech-mast, acorns, and roots during 
the night. The soil was all torn up for a space of 
about an acre, probably the only soil for miles — except 
along streams and by springs — penetrable by beaks 
until the sun came out ; and the thrush feasted royally 
upon hibernating caterpillars and chrysalids that would 
have become moths, beetle larvae all curled up and asleep, 
and other pests ; and he must have done a considerable 
amount of good in that place during the next hour or 
so. 

But feasts do not go begging long in a frost-bound 
wild, even if they are hidden ; and by the time our thrush 
had driven several other thrushes away — for he was a 
jealous feeder — and had been driven away by black- 
birds himself more than once, starlings descended upon 
the place with their furious greed, and our thrush con- 
cluded that it was about time to " step off." The 
crowded place might become a quick-lunch resort for 
some others, not insect-feeders — hawks, for instance 

— and was unhealthful for that reason. Indeed, he had 
not more than moved away into the shelter of the rhodo- 
dendrons when a shadow with a hooked bill shot round 
the corner, going like the wind. He had time to see it 
dive like a dipping kite — but it was a sparrow-hawk 

— and to hear the death-scream of a feeding blackbird, 
before he went completely from that place, and it knew 
him no more. 

Soon after that he sighted the sea, wide-stretched and 
restless, ahead, and turned westward parallel with the 



102 THE CRIPPLE 

coast-line, till, in the afternoon, he came unto " a land 
where it was always afternoon " — a flat, damp, dwarf- 
treed, relaxing, gray land, mild, as a rule, and melan- 
choly — a land full of water. But for once it was a 
cold land, and the thrush realized that the bitter frost 
had leapt ahead of him, and that he might now never 
outstrip it again, perhaps. I do not know if he realized, 
too, that the lead sky, that looked as if it were going 
to come down and crush one, meant snow. 

In a bare orchard he was attracted by the sight of 
several blue titmice and two robins, feeding upon one or 
two odd apples that had been left unpicked at the very 
top of a tree. It seemed strange and out of place to 
behold apples in midwinter like that; but, for some 
reason, he took only a few pecks, and his devil prompted 
him down to peck at some soaked bread among the 
violets, and to drink at a spring so exquisitely encrusted 
with moss that it looked as if everything, every floating 
dead leaf, stone, and root, had been upholstered in 
plush. 

Then Fate struck — hard. 

A snap, a thump, and he was bouncing over and over, 
with an air-rifle bullet in his thigh. It was a blow that 
knocked him half-silly, and he was down before he knew, 
but only for a second, because of what he saw. He be- 
held a boy, with an air-rifle in hand, running towards 
him ; but ahead of the boy was the boy's young cat, who 
evidently had learnt to look for a meal when the air- 
rifle went off. 

The cat, being young, however, managed to bungle 
his pounce for the fraction of a second, and that is long 
enough for most of the wild-folk. Came a mad flutter- 
ing, a beating of wings, a quick mix-up, and, before he 



THE CRIPPLE 103 

knew, that cat found himself frantically chasing that 
thrush across the orchard, striking wildly always at a 
thrush that just wasn't there, as the latter part flew, 
part hopped, with every ounce of strength and agility 
that clean, hard living had given him, till he was clear 
of the trees. Then — up and away, with his heart in 
his beak, so to speak, and his brain whirling, till the 
orchard lay " hull down " on the horizon, and was only 
another bitter experience, and a warning, seared into 
the bird's memory. 

So far, so good. He had made his escape, had 
euchred Fate, but — the payment for laziness, the 
terrible cess for a momentary lapse from vigilance, 
which great Nature, in her grim, wise cruelty, always 
demands, had to be met, and the end of it was not yet. 

It began, however, now. 

The thrush discovered that he was not alone in the 
air, and that he had all at once got himself, as it were, 
fixed in the public eye, and was " wanted." A swish in 
the sky made him look up, to see a rook, with a leering 
eye, coming down upon him. He cleverly " side- 
slipped " in mid-air, and let the rook, braking wildly, go 
diving by. Perhaps he wondered what had turned the 
rook hawk. As a matter of fact, the weather had, 
partly, and the rifle had, the rest ; for the rook could see 
what the thrush did not yet realize. 

The rook went away astern, shouting bad language, 
and another foe came to take his, or her, place. Again 
our thrush discovered that he was not alone. Little, 
white, silent, cruel, dancing flakes of white were travel- 
ing more or less with him and downwards, upon the 
following w T ind. The snow ! The snow at last ! And 
he was trapped, for it was to keep ahead of the snow 



104 THE CRIPPLE 

that he had journeyed all that way back again. In- 
deed, you can hardty realize, unless you have almost 
lived their life, what the snow and the frost mean to all 
the thrush people, but more especially to the common 
song-thrush and the redwing. At the worst it means 
death ; at the best, little more than a living death. 

However, to race the snow were useless. Yet he flew 
on, and on, and on, like a stampeded horse, blindly, one- 
sidedly, while the ordnance survey map beneath turned 
from brown, and chocolate, and silver-gray, and dull 
green, first to pepper and salt, then to freckled white, 
then all over to the spotless white eider-down quilt of 
the winter returned, as far as the eye — even his binoc- 
ular orbs — could reach, muffling tree and house, and 
garden and copse, and farm and field, and fallow and 
plow and meadow in the one mystical, silent, white 
disguise of winter. And the thrush at length came 
down. 

His eye had spotted a little corner of a garden that 
might have been a spread table in the wilderness. It 
was only a small triangle of lawn, with a summer-house 
at its apex, and a spruce-fir and a house at its base, and 
privet-hedges marking off the rest. But it had a 
" bird-table," and a swept-clean circle on the grass, 
and there was sopped bread upon both. And that place 
was given over entirely to chaffinches, all hens, tripping, 
mincing, pecking, feasting, fighting — because they 
were chaffinches, I suppose, and must fight — all over 
the place. 

The thrush came to anchor upon the roof of the 
summer-house, and — straightway fell upon his beak ! 
And that was Fate's punishment for laziness, one 
second's relaxation from vigilance. 



THE CRIPPLE 105 

Righting himself, he almost overbalanced the other 
way, and only finally managed to come to an intricate 
halt on one leg. The other leg — the right one — was 
twisted back under him, in line with his closed wings 
and tail ; that is to say, it was pointing the wrong way 
for a bird's leg, or, rather, so far as could be seen among 
the feathers, that was how it seemed. Rut the leg was 
not broken ; he could still move his toes and expand his 
foot. Otherwise he could do nothing with it. The leg 
might not have been there, for all the use it was to 
him ; it would have been better if it had not been there, 
for it hampered his flight, or unbalanced him, or some- 
thing, so that he was incapable of traveling now beyond 
the snow, even if he would. Undoubtedly the air-rifle 
had done its work. 

Now, in the wild it is a fairly sound maxim that an 
injured wildling is a dead wildling — that is, unless the 
injury is quite slight. There are exceptions, of course. 
Flesh-wounds and quick-healing wounds are excep- 
tions. 

However, our thrush seemed to be no coward, and 
he at once buckled to, to fight Fate and all the world — 
one bird v. the rest. It was appalling odds, and I guess 
no darn fool could have been found to back that bird's 
chance of winning through. 

Then he showed that he had at least one trump up his 
sleeve. A shape like unto the shape of a silken kite 
came floating in ample circles across the low-hung sky. 
And the color of that shape was brown — pale brown ; 
and the shape was alive, and had the appearance of 
eternally looking for something, w T hich it always could 
not find. So hunts the kestrel falcon, and by the same 
token the thrush knew that this was a big hen-kestrel. 



io6 THE CRIPPLE 

I say " big " advisedly, because in kestrel society it is 
the ladies who have the weight and the vote. 

And the thrush, who had by that time flown to the 
ground, promptly " froze " — froze to stillness, I mean 
— and vanished. It was a startling little trick of his, 
almost an eccentricity; but the fact was that so long 
as he kept still on the dark ground where the snow had 
been swept away — and earth and grass mingled almost 
to a black whole against the white — he was practically 
invisible. This was because of his peculiar somber 
color. Had he been light of dress, like an ordinary 
song-thrush, any eye could have picked him up in that 
spot. 

Now, that kestrel was in a bad temper and vicious. 
She was cursing the snow which covered the doings of 
the field-mice, which ordinarily were her " staff of life " ; 
and she had not killed since dawn. Hence she was a 
public danger, even to wild-folk she usually left alone, 
and just now she was looking for our thrush, who she 
had seen fly down and — vanish. 

There he was, however, bang in the open, unshielded 
by any cover, motionless on one leg, looking upwards, 
and, to all intents and purposes, not there. The kestrel 
came shooting up superbly, going at a great pace on the 
wind, cutting the cold air like a knife, twisting and 
turning her long tail this way and that, but moving 
her quarter-shut wings not one stroke. Right over him 
she dived, her wonderful eyes stabbing down, so close 
that you could see her small, rounded head turning and 
craning. But no thrush did she see. She " banked," 
hung, swept round, and came back. Then she hovered, 
like a bird hung from the sky by an invisible hair; and 



THE CRIPPLE 107 

for our thrush she was indeed the sword of Damocles, 
for the spot in the air where she hung was directly over 
him. If anybody had shot her dead at that instant, she 
would have fallen upon his back. At that instant, or 
the next, she might fall upon his back, anyway, without 
anybody shooting her. Indeed, the betting seemed a 
good few hundred to one that she would. 

Very few human beings know the full meaning of the 
word "still" — not even bluejackets! — but most of 
the wild-folk do. They have to. So did the thrush, 
but never before had he kept so utterly, stonily, 
frozenly, strickenly motionless. If he had moved an 
eyelid even, winked, or gulped too hard, it would have 
been all up with him. But he didn't and it was not all 
up ; though the kestrel seemed as if she were going to 
hover there, in that spot, through all eternity. And 
when at last she condescended to surrender to the wind 
and vanish like a falling star into the horizon, our 
friend was as near nervous prostration and hysteria as 
a bird can be. A very little longer and I believe he 
would actually have died from sheer overstrain, instead 
of from kestrel. 

Then the thrush fed. He did it against time, before 
dark, for if night came and caught him with an empty 
crop, he froze. Perhaps he would freeze, anyway ; but 
no matter. 

The hen-chaffinches, presumably at the end of a 
journey, or part way along it, too, were in a like 
hurry, and for the same reason. He could see them 
now only as faint splashes of white, as they opened tail 
and wing to fight ; but they could not fight him, and he 
savagely kept the little clearing in the snow free of all 



108 THE CRIPPLE 

save himself. It was as if he knew that he was " up 
against it," and the fact had developed a grim fierceness 
in his character. 

An owl must have gone over about this time, because 
an owl did go over that garden about the same time 
every night ; but perhaps she was not expecting thrushes 
in that gloom, or was in a hurry to keep an appointment 
with a rat. Anyway, the owl did not develop. 

Thereafter and at last the thrush went to sleep in a 
spruce-fir. 

Dead silence reigned over the garden, and Cold, with 
a capital C, gripped the land. Heaven help any bird 
who roosted on an empty stomach on such a night ! It 
would freeze to its perch before morning, most like. 

Indeed, our thrush had a neighbor, a hedge-sparrow 
just newly arrived from " somewhere up north." It 
had come in after dark, and therefore had no time to 
h-vd. Tin 1 thrush just took his head out from under 
his wing and opened one e3 T e, as the poor little beggar 
perched close to him for company. He could see it 
plainly in the petrified moonlight. 

When next he opened one eye and looked, dawn was 
at hand, and the poor little bird was still there. When 
at last, with shoulders humped and feathers puffed, our 
thrush flew down to feed in the first pale-gold glimmer 
of very-mueh-diluted sunlight, the hedge-sparrow did 
not move. Xow, in opening his wings, possibly from a 
vague idea of frightening the hedge-sparrow away from 
the magic swept circle on the lawn close by, and its 
bread, the thrush brushed heavily against that hedge- 
sparrow, so that — oh, horror ! — it fell, or swung over 
backwards, rather, and hung head downwards, swaying 
slightly, like a toy acrobat on a wire, before it fell, so 



THE CRIPPLE 109 

rigidly and so stiffly immovable that one expected it to 
shatter to pieces like glass as it hit the ground. It did 
not, however. But it did not matter. The hedge- 
sparrow was quite, quite dead before it fell, frozen stiff 
and stark in the night. And none of the other birds 
seemed to care. Why should they? Such a fate might 
overtake themselves. 

The thrush, much tucked up, but still with some fight 
in him, was late. Big flocks of peewits or green plover 
— he could see them between the spruce-boughs — had 
gone drifting by, winking like floating silver, high over- 
head, bound westward ; and skylarks were passing over 
the garden, one by one, heading southwest towards the 
warm, and chortling to each other as they went. Star- 
lings — some of them with extraordinarily bright- 
yellow dagger-beaks, and some with dull beaks — were 
before him, squabbling and sparring over the bread on 
the lawn. A robin dropped a little chain of melancholy 
silvery notes, and a great titmouse bugled clearly, 
" Ting-ling ! Ting-ling ! Ting-ling ! " Some one 
opened a window of the house giving on to the lawn, 
and the last house-fly blundered out into the cold air; 
and a company of gnats — surely the most hardy of 
insects — was dancing in the pale sunlight by the sum- 
mer-house, above the snow. 

The opening of the window had erupted the starlings 
into the surrounding trees, there to whistle and indulge 
in a " shiveree," such as is dear to the heart of the 
excitable, social starling. And our thrush was stand- 
ing motionless in the middle of the swept circle on the 
lawn almost at once. No one saw him go there. In- 
deed, unless the observer looked closely, no one saw him 
at all, for even then he was, unless he moved, difficult to 



no THE CRIPPLE 

see, and, whatever had been his custom before, in those 
days he moved but little. 

He had come at even to a garden given over to hen- 
chaffinches — no cocks, as we said — but at dawn, or, 
rather, his later hour for rising, he found the garden 
given over to song-thrushes, all pale beside him, all slim, 
all snaky of build — Continental song-thrushes, most 
like, and the same only come to those parts in very hard 
weather, for they come a long way. 

Our song-thrush, standing on his one leg, looked at 
them with one shrewd eye. There were two of them in 
the snowless circle on the lawn, which had been swept 
clear of the snow, that was now deep, before he was up, 
and had also been replenished with bread. Two 
thrushes sat in the spruce-fir, and one on the top of the 
summer-house, and every jack of them was ravenous. 
He could expect no mercy from them. They must live, 
if they could, and there was not enough food for all. 
And he asked no mercy himself, either. Still, it was 
long odds. 

Then he showed that he, even a bird, knew the laws 
of strategy, the essence of which is surprise. He sur- 
prised everybody by suddenly charging at the thrush 
on the lawn near him with a murderous ferocity that 
took one's breath away. It certainly would have taken 
away that of the other song-thrush, if our friend had 
not knocked it out of him by the impact. By all the 
laws of precedence, of course, any one of those others 
ought to have sent him, with his one leg, into headlong 
retreat by merely threatening. But our friend was not 
concerned with the laws of precedence, it seemed. He 
became a law unto himself, and a most amazing " char- 
acter " to boot. Also, he fought like several demons. 



THE CRIPPLE 1 1 1 

and, by sheer reckless fury, removed that dumbfounded 
rival of his from the lawn in twenty-one hectic seconds. 

Then he fed — it was enough only to glance, just 
glance, at the other thrushes and the chaffinches, after 
that astounding exhibition of his character. He fed, 
and, after he had stuffed full, he stood still a little way 
off. 

This was the signal for two of the thrushes in the 
spruce-fir to flap down to the bread. One got there. 
The other saw w r hat was coming, and turned hastily 
back. The one that got there snatched up a piece of 
bread. But he never ate it. Something hit him on the 
side. It felt like the point of a skewer, but it was our 
thrush's beak, really, and by the time he had recovered 
from that blow he found himself so busy saving his 
eyesight that he was glad enough to drop his bread and 

go- 
That, however, was not enough for our thrush. He 
appeared to " see red," and with a terrible cruel, re- 
lentless " redness." He followed the retreating foe to 
the spruce-fir, flying heavily and aw T kwardly by reason 
of his smashed leg. He perched beside him on the 
branch he settled upon, nearly overbalancing, and peri- 
lously swaying and wobbling, with wings wildly flap- 
ping, and he drove that thrush to another branch, with 
such a rain of pecks that the feathers flew. Nor was 
even that enough. He followed up the attack, and hus- 
tled the thrush from that other branch, so that he flew 
down the snowed-up road. Then our cripple, spinning 
in a whirl of snow, hurled himself upon the other thrush 
in the tree, and drove him out of it into the road. 

But even that did not suffice him, for devils seemed to 
have possessed him, and the thought of opposition sent 



112 THE CRIPPLE 

him crazy. He blundered into the privet-hedge, and 
unearthed a half-frozen confrere, who fled, squawking 
peevishly, leaving one tail-feather in our friend's beak; 
and finally he flew down to the road. 

In the road, he first of all buried his face in snow, 
then fell on his side, deep snow not being, he discovered, 
an ideal medium in which to get about on one leg. Dur- 
ing that performance his rivals could have abolished him 
five times over if they had had the heart to unite. But 
they seemed to think otherwise, and had not the heart 
for anything. They sat still, with that helpless aban- 
don that afflicts fowls and other birds in disaster, and 
they seemed about to starve practically on the spot, if 
left alone. 

Our thrush, however, did not leave them alone. 
They were a direct threat to his only line of communi- 
cation with life, so to speak — namely, food. Where- 
fore, either they or he must go. Soon he found that 
cart-ruts make convenient roads for the birds in the 
snow, or perhaps it was the chaffinches, who were fol- 
lowing one another in lines along the cart-ruts, who 
showed him. 

Then and there, in the road, our thrush seemed to go 
berserk. He landed upon the thrush nearest to him, 
spread-eagled and hammering like a feathered devil. 
There was a whirl of brown feathers and finely powdered 
snow for about ten seconds, at the end of which time 
that other thrush detached himself and fled, even as 
his conqueror hurled himself upon the next bird. 

There were two here, side by side, but neither was 
quick enough to parry our friend's lightning lunges, 
after he had beaten down their guard with his wings ; 
and they, too, got up and winged into the leaden, 



THE CRIPPLE 113 

frowning sky. The others did not wait. They had 
seen all they wanted to, apparently, and w r ould take no 
part in the play. They faded out among the drifting 
snowflakes, over the still, white fields, and our thrush 
was left to the lawn, and the bread, and the swarming 
chaffinches, whom he easily kept aloof, and — yes, there 
was no getting away from it — the one thrush on the 
summer-house w r ho, you will note, had never moved. 
But when he looked he found that thrush was not on the 
summer-house, but on the lawn, eating bread ; and when 
he flew down to the lawn to investigate — he flew and 
landed very clumsily — he made a discovery that 
seemed to surprise him; or did he already know it? 
Anyway, the thrush on the lawn was a lady, and — 
well, what would you? The cripple balanced as well as 
he could, and looked foolish. It w r as all he could do. 

The day passed swiftly, and faded out in blinding 
snow. Most of the time the cripple stood motionless, 
watching his companion and guarding his swept circle, 
and, as often as he could, he fed. And neither then nor 
at any other time, except once when the gardener nearly 
trod upon him before he would move, did he utter a 
sound. The last glimmer of day showed him still at 
his post, motionless, all but invisible. But he roosted, 
as a matter of fact, in the privet-hedge, on the south 
side of the summer-house, and this time he was not 
alone. 

The day had been trying enough, with its fights and 
its three cats, which passed within reach of him, and 
could have slain him — for his injuries made him slow 
to get under way — if they had not failed to see him, 
because so still. The night, however, was a clouded 
terror. 



ii4 THE CRIPPLE 

Certainly he went to bed — if one may so call it — 
full, if not warm exactly ; but that was the only ad- 
vantage. It snowed with ghastly, relentless steadiness, 
and it blew like the hacking of sharp knives. 

But through it all, because full fed, the cripple, with 
all his handicap, and his lady companion lived; lived 
to see the hard dawn pale tardily ; lived to watch the 
kind gardener — under strict orders assuredly, or he 
would never have done it — sweep a space clear on the 
lawn and spread food for the birds ; lived to ruffle his 
feathers and fly down; and lived to see the thaw which 
came that afternoon, when the warm sou'-wester came 
romping over the land, and winter's last stand was over- 
come by the forces of spring, and all the wild breathed 
a sigh of relief and went abroad gavlv to feed. 

But the cripple lived to see other things. For there 
came a day, about a week later, when our cripple, who 
had been " keeping company " all the time with his lady 
friend, heard the whole dawn awaken to a sudden mighty 
chorus of thrush song. I don't know why they all chose 
to burst into song thus as at a given signal, but they 
did, and the effect upon the cripple and his companion 
was curious. He had just landed upon the top of the 
summer-house on his one leg, in a particularly awkward 
and unbalanced manner, and he perched, listening, as if 
rooted to the spot, and with something nearly ap- 
proaching horror in his eyes, it seemed to me. 

The female bird listened, too, for about a minute, and 
then, ignoring the poor cripple as if he had never ex- 
isted, hopped towards the spruce-fir — atop of which a 
particularly fine and strong-voiced songster was war- 
bling — as if she were drawn by ropes. And — oh, 
horror ! — the songster came down to her. 



THE CRIPPLE 115 

The cripple never uttered a sound, not a song, or a 
call, or a sign. He hurled himself straight at this new 
rival like a bolt shot from a crossbow, and he fought. 
My word, how he fought ! But this new antagonist was 
no half-frozen, half-starved Continental song thrush. 
He was a Britisher, thick-set, bullet-headed, thick- 
necked, who had wintered, perhaps, in the south of Ire- 
land or farther, and he fought like a Trojan. 

All up and down the lawn the fight raged, and in and 
out of the hedges, into the mountain ash and out again, 
down to the ground and up again ; but in the end — 
ah, but it could have only one end ! — the Britisher was 
on the top of the summer-house, literally shouting his 
song of triumph. And the cripple was on the ground 
at the foot of the hedge, beneath the spruce-fir, lying 
on his side, blood-stained and panting. Nobody saw 
him creep away. Nobody cared — certainly not his 
lady acquaintance, who was too busy receiving glad 
eyes from the conqueror. 

Also, nobody saw him die. Yet next morning he 
was dead, stiff and still on the ground beside the sum- 
mer-house. Some think that it was the injuries he 
received in his last great fight that killed him. I do not. 
I could find no wounds upon him sufficiently severe to 
sustain that theory. I think he died of a broken heart. 
Don't you? 



VII 
' SET A THIEF "■ 



Cob arrived in a snowstorm of unparalleled ferocity. 
He came upon extended vans sixty-nine inches from 
tip to tip, which he seemed as if he were never going 
to flap. All black above, all white below, he was. The 
fact was worth noting, because, as seen from below, 
he looked neither black nor any other hue, but just 
indiscriminate dark, unless he swerved against the little 
light, and then his white " hull " shone like silver. 

In his calm tacking, in his effortless play, in his 
superb mastery of the furious gale, one realized that 
here was one of Nature's masterpieces. He arrested 
the gaze w r ith his serenity, and in his majesty of flight 
marked himself as a bird apart. 

Here was a bird accustomed to power, to respect, and 
to wield fear, as a king might do; but he was no king, 
even among birds. He was a great black-backed gull, 
immense, austere, and cruel, with eyes as cold as the 
waves whose glitter they reflected, and a heart as im- 
placable as the storm that cherished it; sea-rover, pil- 
lager, pirate, swashbuckler, son of the storm in whose 
fierce buffet ings he rejoiced, master of the gale upon 
whose fury he flourished — the very spirit of the ocean's 
frontiers, arrayed in the spotless uniform of the sea, 
sailing under her bold colors. 

And then, as he suddenlv came, the watcher, had 

116 



"SET A THIEF"— 117 

there been one, would have looked at him expectantly, 
for an eagle, bristling with weapons, so to speak, fierce- 
eyed, mighty, and scowling, came flapping heavily 
across the white-fretted bay. There is expression in 
birds, and most have their feelings and their character 
stamped upon their whole body. But there was no ex- 
pression in Cob. His cold eyes continued to stare with 
steady stoniness, his vast vans to waft an occasional 
shallow, lazy quarter-flap, his spotless head to peer 
down at times. Once only, as the real king of the birds, 
on his course, drew very near, so that you could hear 
the deep, dry " hough ! hough " of the powerful wings, 
did Cob open his red-stained — as it were blood — yel- 
low beak, and give utterance — one could call it no more 
— and so instantly close his beak again and revert to 
his absolute expressionlessness that one had a job to re- 
alize what, or who, in all that vast scene, had spoken. 

" Fm-Great-Black-Back ! " he said very quietly, 
quickly, gratingly, and tersely ; and then, as if expect- 
ing an answ r er, added, " Eh? " in a hollow undertone. 

The eagle's imperial head jerked round as he flew, and 
he shot a stabbing, sheathed glance at the great sea- 
bird, as a king might at a man in a crowd who begins 
to fumble at his hip-pocket. But, save for that, he 
took no further notice, and beat on with his terrific, 
piston-like, regular w r ing-beats ; and the gull, that 
speckless, dazzling, hardened, hard giant, laughed — 
laughed, I say, softly and to himself, hoarsely and inso- 
lently : " How-how-how-how ! " It was as if he 
laughed in derision. 

And then a strange thing happened. From the op- 
posite stupendous cliffs, draped in snow, be jeweled with 
icicles, frowning and desolate, an ominous black shape 



n8 "SET A THIEF"— 

flung itself furiously, and made straight for the eagle, 
barking hoarsely with rage as it came. Another hol- 
low bark followed, and a second evil ebony form hurled 
down from the tottering cliff-top, and flapped towards 
the eagle in the path of the first. Bark echoed bark 
above the deep mutter of the breakers, and the echoes 
along the cliffs answered both uncannily and mockingly. 

They were a raven, disturbed from her wool-quilted 
nest, and her mate ; but if they had been hobgoblins 
straight from an evil dream, they could not, in that im- 
mense, grim setting, have been much more impressive. 

The great black-backed gull said no more, but wheeled 
on as if nothing had happened. 

The eagle said nothing, and tried to beat on as if 
nothing had happened, too. He did not succeed, for 
the ravens who had been addressing him most particu- 
larly soon addressed themselves personally to him ; and 
before he knew just how it all came about, they had sum- 
moned a quite amazing and unexpected aerial acrobatic 
power, and were shooting and diving, striking and flap- 
ping, about his regal head in a manner that even he 
could not pretend any longer to ignore. No one, not 
even a king of all the birds, feels comfortable under 
the imminent possibility of losing an eye — and such 
a haughty, wonderful eye, too. Nor did the eagle. 
And he showed it. One presumes he might have abol- 
ished the pair — one or both — but the eagle never let 
on what he presumed. What he knew was that he had 
nothing to gain in a fight with such super-hooligans, 
and everything to lose, for one wound only might mean 
a dead eagle via starvation and a dead raven — what 
was a dead raven worth, anyway, to him, or anybody 
else ? 



"SET A THIEF"— 119 

Therefore the eagle changed his mind about continu- 
ing his course, which would have taken him above the 
ravens' nest. He did it grandly, and without giving 
the impression that the ravens had anything to do with 
it — he could have squeezed the life out of them with 
one awful handshake, if his heart had been as big as his 
claws. But they had something to do with it. And 
they knew it. So did Cob, who laughed again, hoarsely 
and as one appreciating a joke, while he wheeled and 
wheeled over the following waves, seeing all things and 
never appearing to see anything. 

Then at last, when the king of all the birds had sunk, 
like a speck of floating burnt paper, away over the far, 
white-mantled hills, the ravens suddenly evaporated into 
nowhere. Probably no one had seen them go except 
Cob, and Cob was by now a lonely, dwindling speck 
away over the restless ocean. Then he was not. He 
was coming back, swinging along with great, easy, shal- 
low half-flaps, so sublimely lazy that he seemed merely 
to swim through the gale. But he covered distance ; 
there was speed as well as majesty in his flight, for all 
that. 

In a very short time he was above the cliff's, silent, 
sinister, almost stealthy. One of the ravens came back 
suddenly, diving over the crest, half-demented with 
anxiety to cover her eggs from that stony stare of the 
sea-rover ; and Cob, seeing where she had come from, 
surrendered himself to the gale, hurtled down-wind, 
veered, tacked, circled, rocking, and came down in a 
series of his oblique plunges — smack-bang into the 
middle of a gory dinner-party, consisting of the male 
raven, five gray or hooded crows, and one silver herring- 
gull, feasting upon the carcass of a dead sheep. 



120 "SET A THIEF"— 

Every head went up, every eye blinked, every wing 
half-opened, ever} 7 beak shut tight as Cob, whom every- 
body had thought to be miles away by that time, threw 
forward his wings, umbrella-fashion, flung them up, bat- 
fashion, fanning wide his tail, dropped his giant webbed 
feet, and came to anchor with a rush. Then he folded 
those wonderful pinions of his, foot by rustling foot, 
stared stonily at the amazed, mute company around 
him, and, throwing back Ins immaculate, smooth, low- 
browed, spotless head, laughed to the winds, hoarsely, 
loudly, wildly — a rude, baleful, transport of mirth : 
" How-how-how-how-how ! " 

The raven did not laugh. He had to feed his sitting 
wife — not counting his big self — in that bitter 
weather, and he was pluming himself upon having 
turned the eagle from sight of this gift banquet from 
Providence as well as his nest. The gray crows saw 
no cause for merriment, remembering how big the great 
gull was, and how small are these little, long-wooled, 
black-faced hill sheep. Moreover, sheep do not often 
oblige by getting turned turtle in a cleft of rock, and 
being unable to right themselves before poor, starving, 
wild hunters — I won't swear who, but it was not the 
raven this time — can come and peck their eyes out. 

Cob looked at them again — all five of the gray 
crows sitting staring straight down their own black 
gouge-beaks, hunched, cold, out-at-heels, and dejected. 
Then he laughed again — burst into another wild, jeer- 
ing fit of merriment, and fell to work. 

First of all, he pointed out to the raven — his beak 
was the pointer — that he was sitting upon the choicest 
portion of that sheep, and must make way therefrom 
instantly. Next, he turned his head and looked — only 



"SET A THIEF'— 121 

looked — at a gray crow that had presumed, upon the 
turning of his broad, black back, to recommence feed- 
ing, and that hooded crow moved one yard in one sec- 
ond — out of reach. And next, Cob, who apparently 
loved discipline and cherished good manners, started his 
banquet, and allowed the others to start theirs. 

But it was an unholy feast. Cob tugged and tore 
like a butcher without any knives. At times he nearly 
fell backwards, when the meat gave way ; at times he 
bolted, and gulped, and choked horribly; at times he 
was nearly standing upon his head, and at other times 
upon his tail ; and, in case the others should find the 
woolly outside, where they alone could feed, too easy, 
he was continually breaking off, to rush — a red-headed 
demon from hell now — at the raven, or glare at the 
crows and remove them yards, as if his eyes could kill. 
As for the herring-gull, he raced and danced in a crazy 
circle round his giant clansman, apparently smitten 
with delirium at the luscious titbits he was obliged to 
watch vanishing down Cob's bright throat. 

The raven, however, was growing desperate. He was 
under contract to Fate to feed his wife. She would 
freeze there on her nest in the snow among the icicle- 
studded ledges else. And every time he had got hold of 
a big enough dainty to tug free and fly off with, Cob 
had cut in and collared the said morsel. As a matter 
of fact, friend raven was a better carver than the sea- 
pirate, had a beak better suited for the grisly purpose. 
Finally, the black one got hold of a piece of meat, and 
did not let go. He hung on, and, before anybody real- 
ized that he had moved, Cob's yellow-and-red-painted 
bill — nearly all red now — had closed upon that rav- 
en's neck. There was one wild, asthmatical croak from 



122 "SET A THIEF"— 

the raven, a whirl of sturdy black and overshadowing 
black-and-white wings, and the raven was jerked clean 
head-over-heels, where, among the heather, he lay for a 
brief second, kicking ignominiously, on his sable back. 

Here the crows fled to strategic positions upon bowl- 
ders, waist-deep in heather, hard by, expecting a like 
fate, and leaving the herring-gull to gobble up what he 
could in the confusion, and risk his life in the process, 
when suddenly, above the beating of wings and the hiss 
of wind, all distinctly heard, and jumped at, the sound 
of a single, horrible, instantaneous, metallic clash. 

Cob's agonized yell, the clash itself, and the whir and 
rush of wings, as every bird there present literally flung 
itself into the air, seemed really, though of course they 
were not, coincident — such is the quickness with which 
these wild creatures act. But Cob alone remained. 

He stopped in mid-spring horribly, and suddenly, as 
if a Hand had reached up and plucked him back. For 
a second his wonderful wings beat and beat tremen- 
dously, frenziedly, with a noise you could hear all up 
the hill ; then he fell back in one demented, frenzied mix 
up of bashing, smashing pinions, legs, tail, and whirling 
feathers. 

That clash, which had jarred Cob's frame from head 
to hind-toe, was a trap, alias a gin, alias a clam, and the 
rack of man's Inquisition of the wild. He had stepped 
upon it ; it had gone off, and caught him by the right 
leg, and, being anchored by a chain, had refused to let 
him go when he sought to remove himself, trap and all. 

What followed during the next minute or tw r o it 
would scarcely be fair to so fine a bird to print. More- 
over, it was unnice to behold. Wild-folk have a habit 
often of going temporarily insane when they first find 



"SET A THIEF'— 123 

themselves trapped, because the trap represents to them 
the most supreme, the most unbearable, of all terrors 

— loss of freedom ; and freedom is to them more than 
life, especially to birds, and more especially still to 
those whose lives are dedicated to the wild, free sea. 

At the end of that time Cob lay exhausted upon his 
side, one mighty pinion pathetically trailing in the 
snow, his beak open, his whole jet and spotless white 
body shaken and convulsed with pantings that were al- 
most sobs. He seemed in danger of dying there and 
then upon the spot, with sheer, sickening horror or a 
broken heart. 

The herring-gull was a silver line — about as big as 
a thrip — to seaward. The gray crows climbed the 
heavens to landward, like flies that climb a window- 
pane. Only the raven had not gone, quite. 

The raven was a bird, of course, and every bird has 
got to do its duty. There can be no shirking. His 
duty was to supply food to keep the fires of life burn- 
ing in his mate as she sat upon her icy nest. His duty 
was to see that his eggs, their eggs, hatched out ; and 
with him the motto was : " The end justifies the means." 
This bird, this sea-rover, this big pirate, alone stood 
between him and the discharge of duty. There was no 
other way, no other food ; he had searched. Where- 
fore, the raven stayed ; he knew all about traps, few bet- 
ter, and he stayed, waiting, if it please you, for Cob to 

— die! 

But Cob would not oblige. He had not got a broken 
and crushed leg, as the raven possibly expected. He 
was not injured, as he should have been, according to 
program ; only puffed. The mercy of Allah had seen to 
it that some teeth of that instrument of vile torture 



124 "SET A THIEF"— 

that had hold of him were broken off, and that his leg 
should have been caught in the gap thus formed. 
Moreover, the trap had not been looked after ; it was 
rusty, and did not shut quite properly. The spring 
was weak, or some grit had got in, or something, 
and a smart rat would have got out of it easily ; but 
a rat is not a gull, and knows too much. 

Thereafter, nothing happened for a long while. 
Cob's first delirium seemed to have spent him, and per- 
haps taught him how much a leg can hurt when tugged 
by the full lift of sixty-nine-inch wings, especially when 
one tries to whirl round upon it when it cannot turn. 

The raven sat on his lichen-decorated, snow-draped 
bowlder, hands in pockets, so to speak, abominably un- 
tidy, with a pessimistic hunch of the shoulders, but a 
light in his eyes, a strangely malignant, devilishly 
roguish leer, that belied his appearance. Perhaps he 
was waiting to see if Cob during his struggles obligingly 
touched off any further deadly surprises that might lie 
hidden in the vicinity. One never knows. He had seen 
a gray crow double-catch himself in two traps lying 
close to one another — once. 

Nothing happening, however, that raven presently 
sailed in on his fine work. He broke his neutrality with 
a sudden dry rustle of wings, and clumsily half-hopped, 
half-heavily flapped, down to Cob, lying there still and 
silent, but very much awake, upon the snow. He al- 
most seemed to be rubbing his hands, or, rather, his 
claws, that ebon rascal. This was, indeed, a game after 
his own heart. 

Cob never moved when the raven arrived. I suppose 
he knew all about ravens, and what one may expect from 
them. He only stared at him with one cold eye, a tense, 



"SET A THIEF"— 125 

lop-sided stare ; and he mouthed a little — if one may 
be permitted the expression — with his beak, like a 
man moistening his lips. 

The raven looked him over critically, leeringly, inso- 
lently, with a hateful air of ownership. Then the raven 
sharpened the gouge thing which he called his beak — 
wheep-wheep — upon a stone, as birds do, and tightened 
his feathers, as if almost visibly tucking up his sleeves 
for — well, for the job. 

Then he tweaked Cob's tail, apparently just to see 
how much alive he was. But Cob did not move, be- 
yond drawing one webbed leg — the free one — up un- 
der him. 

Then the raven dug him under the wing — punched 
him in the ribs, so to speak. But Cob did nothing more 
than cringe — cringe from head to hind-toe, like a 
worm. 

Then suddenly, startlingly suddenly, with the full 
stroke, the dreaded pickax blow, of all the ravens, he 
let drive straight at Cob's clear, shining eye — the left 
one, with which Cob, with his head twisted, had all 
along been regarding him. He had disclosed his hand, 
that raven. It was devil's work. 

Till that moment Cob had never moved, as we have 
said. Save for his one eye and his quivering, one would 
scarcely have known that he lived. That was his game, 
perhaps. Who can tell? For a stolid, slow-thinking 
gull may have, in his way, just as deep, or low, a cun- 
ning as a brilliant-brained raven. Anyhow, in that 
fiftieth of a second allowed, just when it seemed as if 
nothing could save his eye, Cob's head snicked round and 
up, and he slid the enemy's beak down off his own with 
as neat a parry as ever you saw. And he did more. 



126 "SET A THIEF"— 

He caught hold of the said raven's beak, got a grip on 
beak in beak, and once having got hold, he kept hold. 
This was nothing new to him. It was his way — one 
of his ways — of fighting rival great black-backed gulls. 
But it was new to the raven, and he had not previously 
thought out any proper counter to it. (There is a 
counter, I think.) Result — caught raven as well as 
caught gull. 

Then it was that raven's turn to go mad, and dance a 
paralytic kan-kan ; but he could not get any change out 
of that gull. Cob hung on almost as well as the trap 
hung on to him, and far more twistfully. He was quite 
at home, of course. He had been brought up to this 
sort of thing. It was the official regulation gull way 
of fighting under set rules, but he could rarely get any 
other bird than a gull to fight with him like it. It was 
not the raven's way of fighting, though, and I think he 
felt himself in a trap. He certainly acted like a bird 
out of its senses, while the gull, flapping hugely, and for- 
getting, in the excitement, his own bondage, gradually 
forced the raven's head back and back over his back, till 
that raven was in the unenviable position of staring 
over his own back at his own tail, upon which he was ig- 
nominiously sitting. Also, his neck was half-dislo- 
cated, and he was nearly choking. And about this time 
it began to dawn upon him that it did not pay in the 
wild to monkey with great black-backed gulls, even 
trapped ones. He swore, as well as he could, in a gur- 
gling croak. Then 

Clash ! 

Horrors upon diabolical horrors! Another trap? 

The same ghastly thought flashed to both birds' 



"SET A THIEF"— 127 

brains at the same moment, and both literally sprang 
bodily up into the gale in one maddened leap, both for- 
getting all else in the panic to be gone. 

Both stopped at the same instant, with a jerk that 
nearly unhinged every bone in their bodies. Both 
yelled with terror at the identical moment. 

Both were released — as by the cutting of a string 

— at the same fraction of time, and both hurtled aloft 
at the same fear-blinded, rocket-like speed. 

But both had not been caught by the same kind of 
trap. 

It was the jerk that had freed Cob from the really 
quite light hold, as we have already explained, of the 
jaws of the steel trap. 

And it was the jerk that had torn out some of the 
raven's tail-feathers, and left them in the jaws of the 

— gray, old, hill fox. 

And it was the fox who was standing all alone, watch- 
ing, with oblique eyes, the two great birds fast dissolv- 
ing with every desperate, stampeding wing-beat into the 
hurrying cloud-wrack and the wild seascape — in op- 
posite directions. He had made a good stalk, but had 
sprung a little short, had brer fox. 

Upon a day, weeks later, we find the raven, whose 
young had left the nest, stolidly soaring over a small, 
flat island, golden with furze, purple with heather, pale- 
rose chiffon where it was covered with sea-pinks. 

In addition to these, only one other hue, beside green, 
was there upon that island gem floating on the jade- 
green sea, and that was a patch of black and white ! It 
flashed to the eye of the raiding rogue-raven, and he 
altered course towards it, when it turned into a female 



128 "SET A THIEF"— 

great black-backed gull, running, literally racing, to 
her nest, which the raven could now see, with its two 
big, buff, dark-splashed eggs. 

Down flopped the giant gull upon her treasure, and 
began yelling, " How-how-how-how ! " at the top of her 
voice. 

But the island seemed empty of life, and her yelling 
useless. 

Down dropped the raven in front of her. 

Down winnowed the hen-raven at the back of her. 

And, both together, they approached. And all the 
time the great black-backed gull continued to yell, 
" How-how-how-how ! " 

At last, when he had got close enough, the cock-raven 
lunged at her, or, rather, underneath her. She parried 
his stroke, and — the hen-raven lunged. Nothing now, 
she knew, could save her eggs, unless she rose to fight 
the cock-raven. The hen-raven then ran in. She 
only required a second in which to ruin each egg, but 
she never got it. 

Nobody saw the avalanche coming, but everybody 
heard it arrive. It w T as of snow-white, and it was of 
jet-black, and it knocked the cock-raven one way, and 
sent the hen-raven, picking up her skirts, as it were, 
and fleeing, the other. And the name of the avalanche 
was Cob. 

I fancy he considered that he bore a grudge against 
that cock bandit-raven. Perhaps in dreams he could 
still feel that trap on his leg. Who knows? He cer- 
tainly used to wake up with outcries, and he equally 
certainly made that cock-raven shy of that island for 
evermore. 



VIII 
THE WHERE IS IT*? 

No one would have thought of looking for any living 
beast in the raffle of dried twigs and tamarisk " leaves " 
between the crawling, snake-like roots of the feathery 
tamarisks if it had not been for the noise. The noise 
was unmistakable, as the noise of a fight always is ; and 
the only other living thing near the spot, a tiny, tip- 
tailed, brown wren — a little ball of feathers, dainty as 
you please, and all alone there, and out of place down 
by the terrible, snow-covered, wind-tortured estuary 
shore — made shift to remove herself, making remarks 

— wrens can't help saying w r hat they feel — as she 
flitted. 

Then the combatants fell out — literally. Up from 
the solid earth between the twisted roots they seemed to 
come, but that proved the art of one of them in conceal- 
ing his front-door from the curious, and down the bank 
of the sea-wall, over and over and over, squeaking the 
most murderous language, and grappling like pocket- 
devils — tumbled a little jet-black and a little dark- 
brown beast. 

They continued the duel upon the dry gravel below 

— the finest and the whitest gravel ever you did see — 
and they would apparently have gone on for goodness 
knows how long if a gray-white, thin, worn post a couple 

129 



130 THE WHERE IS IT? 

of yards away had not turned into a heron and stalked 
an ungainly stalk towards them. 

Then they fell apart, and one of them, at any rate — 
the brown one — ran away in the shape of a water-vole 
— water-" rat," if you will — the heron making spear- 
lunges at him with his bill as he ungainlily skipped at the 
other's tail all the way up the bank. The other fighter, 
the black one, could not rightly be said to have turned 
into anything very much — at least, not anything that 
any one could swear to. It just seemed as if a dark 
blur whizzed about — more bird-like than beast-like — 
around the astonished and prancing heron, and then 
into nowhere. It was like watching a blue-bottle in a 
tumbler, and very extraordinary. The heron never 
even professed to follow it or lunge at it. He preferred 
the water-vole, whose agility was not too fast to see. 

At the place where it had come from, the mouth of 
the hole, it stopped — this beast that could move 
quicker than eye could follow — stopped so suddenly 
and completely that its change from almost lightning 
motion to stony motionlessness in the fraction of a sec- 
ond was nearly as amazing as its first marvelous exhibi- 
tion. It stopped, I say, and became a — a rat. 

To nine hundred and ninety-nine people out of a 
thousand, the word " rat " conveys only one impres- 
sion. This rat did not fulfill that impression. In fact, 
there is more than one kind of rat, and though fate and 
their fathers' Kismet has cursed them all with a name of 
shame, they are not all the kind of people that made it 
so. There is the foreigner, the invader, the common 
brown rat, who is accursed ; there is the old English 
black rat, whom the accursed one has nearly wiped out 
into little more than a ghost ; and there is the water- 



THE WHERE IS IT*? 131 

rat, who is not a rat, but a vole, and would thank you 
to remember the fact. 

And this rat was a black rat, as black as jet, shark- 
jawed, star-eyed, elfin-eared, snake-tailed, lean, long- 
legged, and graceful — a very greyhound among the 
rats. He was there, in that dancing-floor of the winds 
by the estuary, because no common or sewer rats were 
there. They were anathema to him, and they were 
worse — death in many horrible forms. He had been 

there all the summer, all the autumn, and all the 

No, by whiskers ! he was not going to remain there all 
the winter. He had his limit, and he hated cold ; and 
here, down by the flat, sodden, mud-choked shore of the 
estuary, it was so cold that if you didn't jolly well 
mind what you were up to and keep your tummy always 
full, you went to sleep, and — never woke up any more. 

A little pile of mussel, winkle, and shore-crab shells, 
and the backbone of what had been a stranded fish, close 
to the mouth of the hole, showed the rat's account-book 
to date; but there was a line to be drawn even in this 
trade. That dawn — if you could call the gray dark 
of a snowstorm dawn — he, wondrously adventurous, 
had gone shell-fish collecting, away out upon the freez- 
ing wet mud-ooze. He had got three mussels ; a muddy 
face ; muddier feet ; nearly an eye pecked out by a 
mighty, great black-backed gull ; three chivyings from 
herring-gulls ; one nip from a crab who ought to have 
been dead ; two winkles under big stones that took half- 
an-hour to shift ; one dead pigmy shrew — length two 
inches — with a hole in its skull, no brains, and a 
horrible smell ; nearly his life removed by the swoop of 
a kestrel falcon and the javelin-stab of a heron's beak; 
and twenty minutes' hard cleaning to remove the mud- 



132 THE WHERE IS IT? 

stains that were not properly off — to his nice liking 

— jet. And, to add to that, he had no sooner finished 
than he found that some clumsy fool of a water-rat — 
vole, I mean — with a mania for mining, had run a 
shaft into his hole, and brought the whole roof crum- 
bling down upon his scrupulously neat and tidy nest 
of fine hay and carefully shredded rush — the only 
approximately warm corner he possessed in all that 
biting cold — so that days of labor w T ould not repair 
the silly damage; and he had had to enter into a free 
fight with and turn the fool out, nearly losing his life, 
for the fourtli time that short, dark, bitter day, in the 
process. And now he had to clean himself all over 
again ! 

No wonder he was fed-up, and decided to quit. He 
loved the dank marsh, the brackish channels, the long, 
lone wind blowing through the tamarisks, and the smell 

— salt, seaweed, mud, and fish — of it all ; but in this 
weather, when the cold here, even in shelter, was greater 
than the cold in any other spot — and the unchecked 
wind cut like swords of ice — he realized that one must 
be an eider-duck or an Iceland gull, a northern diver or 
an Arctic owl, to stand it, and he w T as none of these. 
Wherefore, though the dusk had made the dull day only 
a little more dark as yet, and the pink, luminous frost- 
haze still hung in the west, lie called down his hole to 
his wife — his one and only wife, but that was not his 
fault — and quitted. 

Ten minutes later you behold our black rat — if you 
had eyes quick enough, but it was a matter of momen- 
tary glimpses, anyway — trekking up a ditch. You 
have pretty well got to take my w T ord for it, because, 
though sometimes you saw him for the half of a second, 



THE WHERE IS IT? 133 

mostly you didn't, and couldn't tell whether there was 
his wife only, or he only, or both. Really there were 
both, but our black friend with the embarrassingly, 
the abnormally, long tail and the genteel head — Mr. 
Mus rattus on Sundays, if you please, and in nowise 
to be confused with that canaille. Citizen Mus decuma- 
nus, the common brown rat — had not the slightest in- 
tention that an}' one should see him, if he could help it. 
His wife might be trusted to look out for herself. And 
for this reason, perhaps, his march was a progress to 
wonder at. 

Did a flock of wild-duck come over from the sea with 
whistling wings, he did not so much get under the over- 
hanging grass as be there. Did a " gaggle " of wild- 
geese go by high over, clamoring like hounds, he went 
out like a blown candle. Did a party of teal — for it 
was the magic hour of " flight," when all wildfowl shift 
their quarters to feed, or not to feed — fairly hissing 
with speed, like masterless bullets, dash over, he — well, 
he was not before you could realize that he had moved. 

Then up and flew round them a shape, and the name 
of that shape was death. It might have been a gull 
with hawk-like form. It might have been a hawk in gull- 
like light-gra}' uniform. And it might have been an 
owl with gull-like dress and hawk-like lines. Whatever 
it was, it was clipper-built, swift, and in fighting trim. 
As a matter of fact, it was neither gull nor hawk nor 
owl, but a harrier, a hen-harrier — that's its name, not 
its sex, for it was a cock — and the same is a half-way 
house, so to speak, between hawk and owl. Possibly 
because they are crepuscular, harriers may be thought 
more rare than they are. This one was " crepuscul- 
ing," and — the black rat did not like it. They had 



134 THE WHERE IS IT? 

met before, and Mr. Ratus had gained a lively dislike 
for this hawk-owl combination, greater than his respect 
— which itself was not small — for owl or hawk. 

Seeing nowhere to go, and nothing to hide in when he 
got there, our Mr. Ratus shifted from one spot to the 
other when the harrier made his cat-like pounce — yes, 
he was something cat-like, too — and had the pleasure 
of seeing the harrier's uninviting talons grab a clawful 
of grass, which, by all powers of judgment, ought to 
have been black rat's fur. 

A mere hawk, or even an owl, might have considered 
this rebuff enough, but not the harrier. He wafted 
himself ten feet aloft on his long narrow vans, and, 
napping owl-like, or almost butterfly-like, began to 
beat, and the beating of the harrying harrier, up and 
down, is one of the most trying ordeals, for the game 
beaten for, in the wild. 

Mrs. Ratus sat where she was, he presumed, playing 
the same bluff. 

But both were without cover, and the black rat, I 
fear, devoutly hoped that she would be fool enough to 
move and give herself away first ; whilst she, on her part, 
was cursing him for many kinds of a fool for starting 
their " flitting " before it was dark. 

While she sat and froze — in both senses — however, 
the black rat, rigid as a beast cut out of coal, with one 
bright, shining eye upon the harrier beating up and 
down, was probing the dusk with the other eye. And 
presently he thought he saw his chance. He would have 
had to move, anyway, I fancy, for the strain of sitting 
there bang in the open was unendurable. His nerves 
would have snapped. So he went to his chance — a 
hole in the bank of the ditch. 



THE WHERE IS IT 4 ? 135 

I say he went, but I only take it to be so because he 
got there. One could not actually see him go. One 
had only an idea, quite an uncertain idea, that some- 
thing, most like a swift bird, had passed up the ditch, 
and one could not swear even to that. It seemed im- 
possible that the flying something had been a four- 
legged animal. 

It was the black rat. Nor did he go straight. He 
went, if I may so put it, every way at once, ending up 
w r ith a merry-go-round dance with death — the harrier 
was pouncing savagely — round a tuft of grass, at such 
a speed that he looked exactly like the rim of a quickly 
spun bicycle-wheel — a halo, that is to say, and nothing 
else. 

And then — he was crouched, panting, inside the 
hole, wondering whether his heart or his lungs would be 
the first to burst. And then? Oh, and then he — 
cleaned himself, naturally and of course. What else 
did you expect? He was the original black rat of 
Old England, and one of the cleanest animals on earth. 

Mrs. Ratus, having vanished past finding while the 
hunt to the hole was on, presently scented her lord out, 
w r hen the night had come and the harrier was gone, and 
together, starting like antelope at every hint of a 
sound, they traveled up the ditch, and up the bank of a 
stream that the ditch folded into. 

Once an owl the nomad, short-eared ow t 1 of the 

marshes — let forth a hoot that would have sent a 
nervous lady into " astericks," and sent them into no- 
where, as if it had detonated a charge of that lively 
mystery called T.N.T. under their dainty feet. Once, 
just as they were lapping like dogs at the edge of the 
ice that was conspiring to span the brook, an otter shot 



i 3 6 THE WHERE IS IT? 

up his head — jaws wide and dripping — almost under 
their long and pointed noses, and they, with one accord, 
and driven by their long tails acting as a spring, leapt 
simply into space. At any rate, they could not be fol- 
lowed by mortal eye, wherever they did leap to. 

And once they met a wandering cat. And that cat 
seemed to go mad, for she shifted about the steep bank 
of that stream, and up, and about — here she swore 
because the spikes pricked her — and down a holly- 
bush, as if she had got a rocket tied to her tail. She 
had not, of course. She was hunting black rats. I 
suppose she saw them. If so, she was the only person 
who did, and I feel sure that, instant as she was, when 
she was up the bank or the holly-bush they were down 
it, and when she was down they were up. Finally, when 
her lost temper had completely run her out of breath, 
she slouched away, spitting like a worn sparking-plug, 
and very much disgusted. And — the black rats 
cleaned themselves ! 

That night was not a profitable one. The shell-fish 
of the estuary were gone, and there was little instead 
on the stream — only snow, and the snow fell quietly 
at intervals throughout the night, hiding everything. 
Rats, too, are creatures of warmth. They hate cold as 
much as the writer, and these two black rats became 
very miserable. They had no home, and did not know 
where to go ; and, save for a few berries, they had noth- 
ing to eat. Mercifully, they had plenty to drink, and 
that is an item with rats, who die in a very few hours if 
they cannot get a drink. 

A bitter, duU paling of the sky, which by courtesy we 
will call dawn, found them cleaning again, with their 
hand-like forepaws, exactly like cats, inside a water- 



THE WHERE IS IT 4 ? 137 

vole burrow. The owner had been out, bark-chipping, 
all night — it was the only thing he could find to keep 
body and life from parting company — and was not 
over-pleased, on his return, to find that he had company 
at home. A short two-round contest ensued, during 
which the water-vole must have felt as if he had taken 
on a bit of black lightning. Then the water-vole went 
away, somewhat bewildered, to turn some smaller water- 
vole out of his winter bed; and the rats curled them- 
selves up, heads between hindlegs, tail encircling all, 
with only their ever-ready, elfin ears poking out to give 
the alarm, and they slept. And, by the way, it was a 
saying in the wild that no one had ever seen them asleep, 
or knew if, or how, they did sleep. 

Nothing came to disturb them during the day — 
which was a wonder, for all the wild was hungry and 
looking for food — and at the hour when 

Night, busy with her dawn, begins it with a star, 

they came out, after a prolonged, starry-eyed stare, 
from their fastness, and continued their journey. 

Things were serious now. They had not fed, and 
could find nothing to feed upon but two hawthorn-ber- 
ries, dropped by the wasteful fieldfares ; but they drank, 
and cleaned, and proceeded up-stream, with that cau- 
tion one only learns in a world full of enemies and empty 
of friends. 

Another six hours of this cold on an empty stomach 
would send them into that sleep — the dread, drugged 
slumber of the cold — from which there is no awakening 
in this world, and they seemed- to know it. They were 
desperate, and their eyes burnt in their sharp heads like 
gimlet-holes of light. Desperate they were, as the 



138 THE WHERE IS IT<? 

poor, little, brilliantly resplendent, and tropic-looking 
kingfisher had, no doubt, been, whom they found, frozen 
into a dried, huddled heap, under the stream-bank, and 
so emaciated that, after they had picked his bones, they 
scarcely knew that they had touched him. 

But anon the face of the snow changed — meaningly 
for them. Whereas before they had been alone, almost, 
in a frozen world, scarcely crossing a trail but the 
quadruple track of water-voles or the chain-pattern im- 
pression of a moorhen — nor had seen a living thing 
but the square-ended, squat, little, black form of a 
water-vole out upon an alder-branch, gnawing bark — 
they now began to be aware of gradually increasing 
company. Not that the company advertised itself, 
mark you. Being wild company, it would not ; but they 
knew it was there. 

The chain-trail of the moorhen reduplicated itself. 
It was joined by that of a water-rail — they saw his 
ruby eyes and rat-like form in passing. The fourfold 
track of a rabbit led the way ahead of them, as if point- 
ing the path, to be joined by the broken footprints of 
another rabbit, and then by the track made by the 
longer leap of a hare, fourfold also. The delicate lined 
marks left by a wood-mouse now kept company with the 
others, and anon the little fairy imprints of two field- 
voles — short-tailed field-mice, if you prefer. They 
crossed the track of another rabbit going, at right 
angles, down to the water to drink, and then the little, 
busy tattoo of bank-voles. Another hare's trail, and 
more rabbits' tracks, began to meander about, but all 
heading more or less one way — the way they were go- 
ing. And then they stopped dead at the smudged 
groove and ancient and fish-like scent of an otter. 



THE WHERE IS IT? 139 

Moreover, they had scarcely got over that than they 
came upon the dog-like tracks, and the smell, like noth- 
ing else, of Reynard, the fox ; and, with nerves fairly 
tingling now, and eyes everywhere at once, they ar- 
rived at last — as the converging trails seemed to say 
they would — at the towering, smudged blur against 
the sky, which was the farm-buildings. 

The black rat peered under the lower rung of a gate 
into a straw-yard, and heard the rustlings of little 
folk — field-vole, bank-vole, and wood-mouse — who 
had gone before him. There was no sign of the others ; 
but that was not strange, for the hares and the rabbits 
had probably gone round to the kitchen-garden, for 
which they were making in their extremity of hunger ; 
and the otter and the fox were, most likely, keeping 
each other off the fowlhouse. 

Wherefore, plucking up courage, the black rat 
skipped into the yard, and made straight for the man- 
ger, where, in the inky blackness under the open- 
sided roofs, he could hear the long-drawn blowing and 
sigh of fat cattle lying down. 

A pale moon came out behind him, and showed him 
tripping lightly over a bullock's broad back. Then he 
was up on the manger-edge, had paused to make sure, 
and was down in the manger, picking up crumbs and 
dust of linseed-cake and chaff. Three mice were doing 
the same thing, but fled at his approach ; but he did not 
trouble about that, for the cattle had not left even him 
and his wife a full meal, having blown what was left of 
the chaff away, and licked up practically all of the 
cake-crumbs and dust. However, it was better than 
nothing. 

The rat's natural curiosity was awakened, and his 



14© THE WHERE IS IT? 

comparative warmth in this place, out of the razor- 
edged wind — oh, what a relief to be out of that in- 
fernal sawing blast ! — made him explore. And he ran 
along the edge of the manger to a hole in the wall, 
which led — the peculiar and indescribable smell said 
so — through to the pig-sties. But here he stopped, 
and his wife behind him stopped. Some one was com- 
ing through from the opposite side — some one who 
smelt very much worse than any pig. 

Next instant both black rats had gone off together 
like sparks — if ever sparks were black — and the 
brown rat, coming through the hole, wondered what on 
earth had happened. Then he sniffed at their trail, 
tried, but found it impossible, to follow, and passed on. 
He would have felt great pleasure in slaying them if he 
could, and they knew that. 

The black rat now essayed to cross the yard to the 
stable. He could not very well stop there — up among 
the rafters, that is — all night, so he came down, and, 
with his wife following him, gingerly rustled out upon 
the partially snow-covered straw. 

Then he got a shock that turned him into a winking 
series of black streaks. 

Then he got another shock which turned him, liter- 
ally, into — well, into black lightning. You never saw 
anything like it in all your life. You never would have 
believed that any living beast could have so frantically 
and so furiously got itself about from place to place so 
instantaneously. It was — dazzling. It made you 
blink. It was It in the agility line, and no mistake. 

Firstly, the brown rat, having hidden up in some 
black corner, w T ith brown-rat cunning, came hopping 
out instantly — nay, charging — on the black rat's 



THE WHERE IS IT? 141 

trail. And there was murder in his wicked, little, glint- 
ing eyes at he came. 

Secondly, a white eider-down quilt — at least, that 
was w r hat it seemed like — descended lightly as — as an 
eider quilt, and as soundlessly, out of the blue-black 
sky, and covered the brown rat up. You could hear his 
horrid, muffled screaming of rage and fear under the 
quilt ; you could see the quilt — but they saw that it 
looked pale brown on top — lifting about, and feeling 
for that murder-child of a rat underneath. Then the 
quilt got him — you could hear the unspeakably beastly 
death-squeal reverberate mufflingly — and then the 
quilt rose, still utterly without sound, and one saw it 
was a big barn-owl, with a rat — a brown rat — twitch- 
ing in its white-mittened claws. 

But do you think that made any difference? If so, 
you don't know the cruel devil of perseverance that is 
the brown rat. 

As the black rat, at the end of his amazing lightning 
display, reached the barn, with his mate behind him, he 
leapt — he could not stop — clean over the back of one 
great twenty-inch, glitter-eyed brown ghoul, called by 
the death-scream of his colleague — other rats usually 
answer it — coming out of a hole. The black rats 
dashed into the hole like flickering streaks, but the 
brown rat had instantly spun upon himself, and was 
after them. 

The barn was an unfortunate choice. It seemed full 
of brown rats, and four of them, in the darkness, in- 
stantly took up the pursuit of the now fairly hunted 
black couple. Nothing but their miraculous agility 
saved those two from being eaten alive, but they came 
out of the barn on to the spotless snow on the far side, 



142 THE WHERE IS IT? 

with only a foot to spare between their long tails and 
the mangy, scarred head of the leading brown fiend 
behind them. 

Straight across the open, like a drawn black bar, 
they shot, to a towering building of wood, and along 
this — here they lost six inches of the precious twelve 
by which they led — looking for a hole. They found it, 
whizzed in, five brown rats close behind them, nine brown 
rats hard behind the five. 

They discovered themselves in a great room half- 
filled with sacks and the sweet smell of corn, and in and 
out among these sacks the} 7 led their hunters such a 
dizzy chase as no man ever witnessed, or could witness, 
for the matter of that, since human eyes could not fol- 
low it. But the end seemed positive, anyway. It was 
only a question of tiring the black sparks out, for the 
four brown rats in the place, engaged upon lowering 
the weight of the Hour in the sacks — one of those rats 
a dreaded cannibal of twenty-one and a half inches — 
joined in the mobbing, and soon the black rats found 
themselves in such a position that there was no escape 
— no escape for any but a black rat. For them there 
was one way. And those two living electric sparks on 
four feet took it. They went up the wall ! 

I don't know, but I guess that, as the black rats' 
upper jaws were longer and sharper and more shark- 
like than the brown rats', and their tails very much 
longer, the}- got a spring off the tail — and legs, too — 
and had an agility in hanging on to knots and crannies 
above that possessed by the brown ghouls. Be that as 
it may, they did it, and got a respite under the floor of 
the room above, before their enemies, traveling more 
normally, and by holes, could swarm up after them. 



THE WHERE IS II"? 143 

Then the two, cornered at last, with one last des- 
perate rush, shot up through a hole in the boards, out 
into the middle of the room on the first floor, and 
stopped dead. 

Ah ! they stopped. Good reason, too. Good reason 
had the five brown rats, excited with blood-lust, hard on 
their tails, to stop also. 

They found themselves suddenly revealed in the mid- 
dle of a big room, furnished mainly with a few sacks, 
and flooded with a dazzling, blinding glare of electric 
light, that seemed brighter than the very sun. 

There the} 7 were, all seven, black and brown, struck 
rigid, plain and clear for any to see. And four men and 
two dogs stood there seeing them. They, those men 
and dogs, had just come quietly for their evening rat- 
hunt, turning on the light suddenly, for the place was 
a mill as well as a farm, making — from the mill-wheel 
— its own electricity. 

There was a strained, aching pause for about as long 
as a man takes to gasp. Then the dogs sprang in, and 
one of the men jumped to the only hole in the room 
they had not previously stopped up. 

But the black rats ! The brown rats died, at inter- 
vals, fighting horribly, as cornered brown rats do. In 
five minutes they were, all five, dead — that is, all that 
had come into the room and been cut off. The black 
rats, however, in five minutes, were not dead. Nobod} 7 
seems to have seen them, after the hunt had once be- 
gun, till the others were killed. Even then all four 
men aver that they could never rightly swear that they 
saw them. They saw lines, and streaks, and flashes, 
and whirls, and halos of black, which might have been 
rats — and the dogs said they were — but no one 



144 THE WHERE IS IT? 

could swear to it. At times these giddy phenomena 
were among the rafters, at other times they were on the 
floor, and yet again the}' were going up or coming down 
the walls ; but all the while both men and dogs seemed 
to be everlastingly too late, and hunting them where, 
half-a-second before, they had been. In fact, they per- 
petualh T had been, and were always where snapping jaws 
and beating sticks were not. 

At the end of half-an-hour the men, mopping their 
foreheads, even in that cold, gasped, " Lor' love yer ! 
Did yer ever see th' like? " 

At the end of three-quarters of an hour the men 
flung themselves, gasping, on to the sacks of flour, and 
the dogs, panting, on to the floor — done. And the 
black rat and his mate, lively as ever, perkily watched 
them from the rafters. 

Then the men and dogs went away, the light went 
out, and presently great sounds of war below sug- 
gested that the brown rats on the ground-floor were 
having the time of their lives. So were the two black 
rats, but a different sort of time. They were feasting 
upon meal and grain. And there, so far as I know, as 
they were like birds, flying among the rafters like black 
lightning if molested, they live to this day. 



IX 
LAWLESS LITTLE LOVE 

She rolled over and regained her feet in a flash, to 
find herself facing a dark beast, with a huge, bushy, 
white tail, held up straight like a pleased cat's — but 
this was a sign of warning, not pleasure — that shone 
ghostily in the gloom of the mysterious, dread thorn- 
scrub. And the face of the beast was the face of a 
black and grinning devil, and its eyes shone red. 

She stood there, shivering a little, with the tiny young 
thing crawling weakly away from almost under her feet, 
and the long, vivid, raw gash that the white-tailed 
beast, coming from nowhere special out of the night, 
had set upon her shoulder — a murderess caught in the 
act. 

On three legs — her left hindleg had been bitten off 
by a trap set for a hyena — emaciated, with all her 
natural buoyant courage gone out of her, her wonderful 
agility gone too, she felt instantly in her heart that she 
could neither face this diabolical-faced foe, nor yet get 
away from it. This same crippled condition had spoilt 
her hunting forays, and, driven by hunger, had made her 
nose into other people's nurseries, and be caught just 
on the point of slaying somebody else's baby, when the 
owner had come home, like a streak out of the night. 

But that was not the worst of it, for she was longer 
than the enemy, a bit, and might have put up a good 

145 



146 LAWLESS LITTLE LOVE 

fight — she had fought for her life, as a matter of 
course, ever since she left her mother's side — if the 
enemy had not brought with her an ally. It was not 
visible to the eye, that ally, but it was to the nose — a 
most distinct and appalling stink, and it could be felt, 
for it made her nostrils smart. Apparently, then, that 
white tail was intentional, was as a red flag, insolently 
displayed, warning all to beware of the stink. Well, 
there is more than one way of holding your own in the 
wild, and a most unholy smell is not such a bad way, 
either, when you come to think about it. 

The owner of that nameless odor was a polecat — not 
our polecat ; worse than that — and — well, you know 
the breed. Fear they know not; neither is pity with 
them a weakness, especially where the lives of their 
young are concerned. This one did not wait. She 
attacked quicker than you could cry " Knife," taking 
off with all four feet together, in a peculiar and patent 
way of her own. 

The would-be murderess, who was long, and absurdly 
short in the leg, too, just like her opponent, only with 
a more graceful and not such a thick-set body, turned 
on herself in a snaky fashion, and her neck, that the 
fangs had aimed at, was not there when the polecat ar- 
rived, but her teeth were, and they closed on the pole- 
cat's cheek. 

The latter gibbered horribly at the spark of pain, 
and set herself really down to fight. 

The intending murderess said nothing at all, but, un- 
balanced with her game hindleg, having no force to push 
or spring with, and being very weak, she knew she was 
done for directly they closed to the clinch. 

In a few seconds the polecat had her down, and only 



LAWLESS LITTLE LOVE 147 

an awful, mad, desperate clashing of fang against fang 
kept the attacker off her throat. It could not last. 

Then it was, at that moment, that a sharp little, gray 
little, dark-spotted, clean-cut, close-cropped, intelligent 
head, on a snaky, long neck, peeped out of the shadows, 
and peered about, as if to see what in whiskers all the 
pother was about. The head might have been there by 
chance, but it wasn't. Its owner had been running her 
trail for hours, and looking for it for days, and didn't 
mean to let her go, now that he had finally come up 
with her, polecats or no polecats, smells or not. But 
he was not a fool. He knew the game, the bitter, cruel 
game of death, as it is played throughout the wild. 
With man the inexorable law is, " Get on or get out." 
In the wild they phrase it another way: "Kill or be 
killed." Man puts it more politely, perhaps, but it's 
all the same old natural law, I guess. 

The head and snaky neck developed a long, creamy, 
tawny-spotted body, and the body a long, banded, ta- 
pering tail — all set on legs so short, they scarcely kept 
the owner off the ground; and the name of that beast 
was genet. The same are a sort of distant relation of 
the cats, a fourth cousin once removed; but it is neces- 
sary to tell you, because you might think they were 
beautiful weasels, otherwise. And she was a genet, too 
— the murderess that might have been. 

Then the new-comer moved. Then he began to move, 
and — here ! It was just like the buzzing of a fly in a 
tumbler. Certainly you could say that he was still 
there, but you could not swear that you actually saw 
him. 

The first that the polecat knew of him was that red- 
hot fork-like feeling that means fangs in the back of 



148 LAWLESS LITTLE LOVE 

jour neck. The polecat spun on herself, and bit, 
quick as an electric needle, at the spotted thing, that 
promptly ceased to be there, and, to use the profes- 
sional term, she " made the stink " for all she was worth. 
She forgot all about the long female would-be slayer 
of her children, and the genet was mightily thankful to 
drag herself clear, but she would not have been she if 
she had failed to get her fangs home, as a parting shot, 
before she went. 

Then, I fancy, she was ill ; and, upon my soul, I don't 
wonder. It was enough to asphyxiate a whale-factory 
hand. But the male genet was not ill, or, if he was, he 
w r as moving from place to place too quickly to give the 
fact away; and by the time he shot up a tree, like a 
long, rippling, cream and tawny-dappled, banded line, 
he left that polecat considerably redder than when he 
found her, and weak, as if she had been bitten by leeches. 
The polecat had certainly saved her young, or thought 
she had, although I cannot swear that the female genet 
had really meant them harm ; but she did not look as 
if she had saved much else. However, she held the 
field of battle, and the foe had fled, and that is supposed 
to be the sign of victory ; but that had been done by 
her " gassing " methods, so to speak, not by fighting 
alone. 

Rippling about among the branches, an incarnation 
of grace personified, and hunting for her by nose alone, 
for in the moonlight her exquisite creamy, dappled coat 
was invisible — a real piece of magic, this — the male 
genet quickly found her for whom he sought. She re- 
mained low, lying along a bough, line for line, shadow- 
patch for shadow-patch, flat as the very bark, and as 
undulating, until she felt sure that he would run over 



LAWLESS LITTLE LOVE 149 

her ; then she rose, spitting and snarling in his face, 
cat-like and vicious. 

It was a poor kind of thanks for having saved her 
life, perhaps, but it was her way — then. And, any- 
way, who can blame her? She had never met any liv- 
ing creature that was not a foe or an armed " unbenevo- 
lent " neutral in all her life, and she did not know that 
any other category or creature existed, the recent fight 
notwithstanding. 

But the male genet neither ran nor fought. He 
dodged her snap, by a tenth of an inch, almost without 
seeming to move, and there he stood looking at her 
meekly. She leapt to him, and he shot off, as she ar- 
rived upon, the place where he had been. Perhaps she 
knew that only a genet, or a mongoose, could do that 
trick in a manner at once so machine-like and precise ; 
and after that she merely sat, bent in a curve, with her 
lips up. But her spring had given her away, and he 
saw that she was lame. Perhaps he saw, too, the gleam 
of hunger, the wild, cruel gleam that forgets all else, in 
her eyes ; but who am I to say whether he understood it? 

Be that as it may, the male vanished suddenly and 
without explanation, doubling on his trail and going 
out like a snuffed candle. He was in view, as a matter 
of fact, several times during the next few minutes, 
climbing quietly ; but the dark blotches of the leaf-shad- 
ows magicked him into invisibility, and no one could tell 
where he was, till suddenly the silence was smitten by 
one piercing squawk somewhere among the greenery 
above. Then a crash, wild fhitterings, a hectic commo- 
tion, and he and a terrified guinea-fowl came down to- 
gether, more nearly falling than he liked. Indeed, he 
must have let it fall, or gone himself with it, as he slid 



150 LAWLESS LITTLE LOVE 

past, grabbing for holds, if she had not dropped quickly 
to the next bough and taken a hold, too. Then, side 
by side, they hauled the warm, feathery, fluttering thing 
up, and he slew swiftly, in order to silence the noisy 
prey, who foolishly kicked up such a noise, as if mali- 
ciously ; for he knew — and perhaps the glean v (guinea- 
fowl) did, too — how quickly a crowd may gather to 
interfere in an advertised " killing " in that wild. 

The female genet, however, was past caring about 
risks. She had reached a stage of hunger when no risks 
can overshadow the risk of starvation, and she had the 
guinea-fowl by the throat, and was sucking its blood 
before the other had time to realize what she was at. 
Then, with fine discrimination, she ate the breast and 
thigh, and later might, or might not, have let him have 
a look in, if some blotched shape had not slid up, with- 
out sound, across the blue black night sky, and, halting 
in the tree, begun, apparently, to crack nuts very 
sharply and very quickly. Whereupon, without say- 
ing anything, the genets faded out. 

It was nothing much, really — only the noise she 
makes when the giant eagle-owl is angry ; but when you 
are a genet, with a body under two feet long, you may 
find it rather a bore, if nothing else, to remain cheek 
by jowl with an angry eagle-owl three feet or so across 
the wings, with the feline temper of an owl, and armed, 
owl-like, to the teeth, if I may so put it. 

Now the question came as the two genets arrived at 
the ground — would she follow him, or would he have 
to follow her? He was determined, anyway, that noth- 
ing short of calamity should part them. Yet I don't 
see, since he never uttered a sound, how she understood 
him to say that if she would follow him he would find 



LAWLESS LITTLE LOVE 151 

her food, even though she was still hungry, for she had 
not yet got to trusting him much more than she trusted 
any other beast, and seemed to think that he was half 
as likely to eat her as to get her something to eat. 
Such a thing as another creature finding her food for 
only just friendliness — love was out of the question 
yet, or out of her question — was an idea her suspi- 
cious nature could not yet grasp. However, she fol- 
lowed. 

Twining and twisting, turning and tripping, in and 
out among the bush and the tree-trunks, soundless, and 
quite invisible, except when they crossed a moonbeam 
— and then nearly so, because the moon has a trick of, 
as it were, dissolving the colors of even fairly con- 
spicuous creatures — they crept on their low way. 
There was not a sound that they did not crouch for, 
often flat as a w T hip-lash — and that wild is full of 
sounds by night, too — not a puff of air that they did 
not throw up their sharp little muzzles to test, not a 
movement or the hint of a movement which their eyes 
did not fix with a suspicious stare. 

They passed a hippopotamus feeding — a sheaf at 
a mouthful — upon long grass ; they came upon three 
wild dogs eating an antelope and gibbering like gnomes ; 
they beheld two striped zebras stampeding from a lion ; 
the} 7 got into the middle of a herd of elephants — but 
what must those giants have seemed to them, almost at 
ground-level? — and did not know it, so silent can the 
mighty ones be, till they heard the unmistakable diges- 
tive rumblings ; they happened on the tail of a leopard, 
observing a young waterbuck antelope, and retired 
therefrom without his suspecting them ; they watched 
some bush-pigs rooting in a clearing, hoping they might 



152 LAWLESS LITTLE LOVE 

turn up some insects worth eating; they heard a moth- 
er-lion grunting among some reeds, and were nearly 
run over by the stampede of zebras that followed ; they 
chased a rat that ran into a hole in which was a snake, 
and it never came out again ; they went up a tree after 
a weaver-bird's nest, but, from the way the bottle- 
shaped structure was hung, could not get at it ; they 
investigated a hare's hole, and found a six-foot mamba 
snake, with four-minute death-fangs, in possession ; 
they risked the thousand spikes of a thorn-bush to get 
at a red-necked pheasant roosting, only to find the 
branch he was on too slender to hold their weight ; they 
were stalked by a wild cat, and hid in a hollow tree ; 
and were pounced upon by a civet cat — who was their 
big cousin — and dodged him most wonderfully ; and 
were chased by a jackal, whose nose they bit when it 
followed them into a hollow log. Finally, they came to 
the wall, and stopped. 

Their noses told them it was not the wall of a native 
village, for no one, not even a man, could possibly make 
any mistake about that. Also, their noses may have 
told them other things. Anyway, the moon saw them, 
in the form of two gray lines, slide over the wall and 
drop silently into the shadow on the far side. 

A wild cat was courting a domestic cat of the bunga- 
low close by, at the corner of the compound, but, flat 
as strips of tawny-spotted cloth, they got past him all 
right. 

A black-backed jackal was gnawing a bit of old hide 
at the angle of the wall, and they were forced to make 
a detour up to the veranda of the bungalow to avoid 
that sharp-eared, sharp-eyed one. 

Here, on the veranda, they discovered a chair, and 



LAWLESS LITTLE LOVE 153 

the male genet, standing on hindlegs to see what was in 
the chair, found himself looking straight into the elec- 
tric-blue, purplish balls of light that betokened another 
cat, w r hich had been asleep, but was now very wide 
awake. 

He went round that chair in the form of a hazy, 
wavy, streak, as the cat shot out of it. The female 
genet faded from publicity behind a palm in a pot. 
But the genet's tail was so long that, with the cat and 
himself going round and round that chair like a living 
Catherine-wheel — both he and the cat spitting no end 

— the cat was touching his tail, while he was snapping 
at the cat's. Wherefore he moved across the veranda 
as an arrow flies, and round the corner, and as he 
turned the corner he — leapt. 

It was a beautiful leap, and it cleared the danger that 
he seemed bound to run into, as it lifted in his path, by 
about an inch. As he sprang he heard the cat's claws 
scraping loudly, as she madly endeavored to stop — 
too late. 

Then the head of the eight-foot python that had been 
creeping up round that corner in the process of stalk- 
ing that cat whizzed by beneath him like a hurled 
poleax. 

As he landed the genet heard the cat make one sound 

— only one — and it was indescribable, and he dropped 
off the veranda into the shadow of a bush, where the 
female genet presently joined him. 

There was a small mongoose (my ! what a lot of 
hunters do collect about the bungalows at night, to be 
sure !) under the bush, engaged in eating that precise 
reptilian form of poisoned death known as a night 
adder, which it had just killed. But the genets had 



154 LAWLESS LITTLE LOVE 

other and private business, and they parted from the 
mongoose with no more than a snarl, the two genets to 
appear next — or, rather, to be no more than guessed 
at — crossing the last stretch of moonlight between 
them and the fowlhouse. 

As they did so, a blurred, vast-winged, silent, dark 
shadow passed overhead, and a peculiarly piercing 
whistle stabbed dagger-like through the waiting, listen- 
ing silence. Both genets jumped, as if the whistle had 
really been a dagger and had stabbed them, and van- 
ished into hiding before the sound had ceased, almost. 
They knew that shadow — the owner of the whistle ; 
they had met her earlier that night — the giant eagle- 
owl. But what the fangs and claws was she doing 
here? After rats, perhaps. They hoped so, and tried 
to think she was not after them. 

The people who are condemned to live in those parts 
know that deaths, many and mysterious, go about there 
in the night, seeking victims, and that fowls must, in 
consequence, be well penned. Yet they die; and it has 
been said that where a snake can squeeze into a fowl- 
house, there a genet can follow — perhaps dealing with 
the snake first, and the fowls afterwards. Certainly, 
there seems to be no longer, and narrower, and lower, 
and more sinuous little beast on this earth than the 
genet. 

The male genet took the problem upon himself as his 
own special province to find entrance into places; and 
the female, her suspicions of him oozing away more and 
more every minute, " kept cave." And he found an 
entrance, that little, long, low beggar ; he found an en- 
trance, a hole up under the roof, that appeared small 
enough, in all conscience, to be overlooked by anybody. 



LAWLESS LITTLE LOVE 155 

The moon knows how they climbed to it — I don't. 
And as the male genet dropped down inside, the female 
took his place. But even as he landed he wished he had 
not. Fear was there before him. 

In the smelly, stifling, heated pitch-darkness a fowl 
squawked with pain, and others burst into noise above 
his head. 

Then he made a blunder. Surprised certainly, and 
angry perhaps, he growled. 

Instantly the confusion ceased and hushed to silence ; 
and instantly, too, round, large, amber-gold balls of 
light like lamps, to the number of two, were switched 
on — fixed upon him, staring, so that he " froze " in his 
tracks where he stood, and her crest stood up on the 
female genet, as it does on a cat, as she peered through 
the hole. They had disturbed something at its killing. 
Very few graven images move less than those two 
pretty but small hunters did in the next half-minute, 
while the fowls settled down again, and the genets tried 
— mainly with their noses — to find out what, in the 
wilderness or out of it, they had run up against this 
time. 

At the end of that period there fell upon their stupe- 
fied ears the sound as if some one unseen were cracking 
nuts — nut after nut, very quickly — in the blackness, 
and both genets very nearly had a fit — a motionless 
one — on the spot. 

Then they knew, most entirely did they know, and the 
knowledge gave them no end of a fright. It was the 
giant eagle-owl. She — it was a she — had beaten the 
robbers in hole-creeping, had outburgled the burglars, 
and outcrept the creepers, though goodness alone knows 
how. 



156 LAWLESS LITTLE LOVE 

The only difficulty was, who was going out first, and 
who alive, and who dead? 

The male genet apparently knew about owls, and 
nothing of what he knew had shown that they were cow- 
ards. Nor was he a coward ; but the wild hunters are 
not out to win the V.C., as a rule, I guess; and, if they 
were, he was not one of them. He was out to feed, not 

fight. 

Possibly, while he was considering this, standing 
there with arched back — by reason of his long body 
and apologies for legs — in the darkness, the owl was 
considering the same thing. Anyway, both seemed to 
make up their minds in the same instant, and to act on 
it. Wherefore they arrived at the hole under the roof 
in the same instant, too ; and you can take it from me 
that there are very few creatures indeed who can go 
into a hole, or come out of it, with such an amazing rush 
as the genet. 

The result naturally was war, and red-hot at that. 

Grappling, spitting, hissing, growling, snorting, 
coughing, the two fell in a heap to the ground — and 
an owl on the ground is one degree more of a spiked 
handful than an owl in the air — where they continued 
the discussion in a young whirlwind of their own, much 
to the perturbation of the roosting fowls, who woke up 
and added to the riot. 

The female genet had gone out of the other end of 
the hole, like a cork out of a bottle, taking a scratch on 
the nose from the owl with her ; but, finding nothing 
further happen, she now crept back and peered in. 
What she discovered did not give her any comfort, for, 
although upon her back, it looked as if that she-owl had 
been specially designed to fight that way. She had one 



LAWLESS LITTLE LOVE 157 

fiend's claw gripped well home on the male genet's shoul- 
der, and another doing its best to skin him alive ; while 
her beak was hammering the gray top of his weasely- 
looking head. True, the male genet's fangs were bur- 
ied up to the socket in the owl's throat, but that was no 
proof that he had found either her windpipe or the 
equally useful jugular vein, and, if he did not pretty 
quick, it looked as if it would never matter, so far as he 
was concerned. 

I like to think of what that little, long, crippled fe- 
male genet did then, in that well-like blackness and that 
smelly heat, with the chance of retreat open to her, 
and no one to say her nay. Without hesitation, she 
dropped to the ground beside the scuffle, and flung her- 
self into it — into the winnowing, slapping radius of 
big pinions, that beat and beat and beat, smothering all 
with feathers and dust. One wing caught her squarely, 
and she fetched up against -the wall, winded and dazed ; 
but she was back again in a flash, dancing on her toes, 
and, suddenly flattening, shot in, level with the ground, 
like a snake. 

She arrived. She felt feathers against her nose — 
she could not see. The wings pounded her flatter. 
She laid hold, biting in as deep and as far as she could 
get. 

As a matter of fact, she had got the owl by the neck, 
but one would have thought she had turned on a young 
volcano by the confusion that followed. Both genets 
shut their precious eyes, and hung on, while that owl 
beat herself round and round in one last wild flurry, 
coughing horribly and humanly the while, and cracking 
nuts. Finally she collapsed as suddenly as a pricked 
bladder, and lay still — a great, mixed-up feathery 



158 LAWLESS LITTLE LOVE 

heap, limp and pathetic, with her vast flung-out wings. 

The two genets backed away, glad enough to be done 
with such a fiery, feathered fury. The male genet 
stumbled a little, and sat down. He was nearly as red 
as the sun on a stormy dawn, but all the blood was not 
his. 

They did not seem to trouble further about the great 
foe lying beside them. Certainly she pervaded the air 
with a musty smell that was not attractive, or, at least, 
not attractive when fowls were by ; and it was to the 
fowls they turned, the female first, the male later, after 
he had done some very necessary licking. 

I fancy that, though dizzy s the male genet was rather 
proud of himself. He had brought his lady-love to 
such a feast as she may have dreamed of, and she had 
saved his life. That gave them a fellow-feeling that 
looked well for his prospects in love. But I do not 
think he had quite realized how hungry that beautiful 
velvet-skinned damsel of his choice was till that minute, 
and then he was given no time to think about it. 

The dark over his head burst like a mine, and feath- 
ers and noise enveloped him whirling. That repre- 
sented the female genet coming down, fixed to the 
throat of a hapless fowl. She sucked the blood, and 
flew at another. Ordinarily she would have removed 
that one and found it enough ; but men who have been 
" broke," when they get suddenly rich, seem to go tem- 
porarily mad with the lust of spending, and so it was 
with her ; only, her madness was the lust of killing. 

She killed, leaping and wrenching at the poor, 
screaming birds' throats, blinded to the world with 
excitement, drunk with blood. That is an awful intox- 
ication, and makes even men, let alone wild, carniv- 



LAWLESS LITTLE LOVE 159 

orous beasts, do unmentionable things. Also, the smell 
of blood was too much for the male genet, and he pres- 
ently rushed, with flying tail, into the crimson orgy too. 

They were some time at this craziness ; and when they 
had finished, they and the fowls that were still alive 
could only lie and pant together among the contorted 
slain, the blood — j t ou would never believe how a cock- 
erel will bleed — and the carmine-tinted feathers. You 
might not believe me if I told you how many fowls they 
had killed, but it was a most disgraceful number, and 
quite inexcusable. 

And then, even as they lay there, dead-beat, they 
started suddenly and together, for, almost like a blow, 
the fact dawned upon them that it was day. Night had 
stolen away, and dawn discovered them at the killing; 
and goodness alone knows how long they had been at it 

— ten minutes or hours. Anyway, here it was, and 
they leapt to their feet together. 

As they hurried out they had to pass the place where 
the carcass of the owl had been! It was gone — mys- 
teriously sauntered as a corpse into nowhere. Owls are 
uncanny creatures at any time, but moving about when 
dead is not usually a recognized habit of theirs. The 
genets sniffed anxiously, and ran the trail to the hole 
under the roof, since it happened to be on their way. 
Through the hole it went, and into the air — literally 
into the air. In other words, that owl had simply 
" bluffed " death when she realized that she was near 
death. The bluff had come off; and at a later, and 
what she judged a proper, time, she had just, and of 
course silently, flown off by the way she had come ; and 

— as I live ! — a fowl had gone with her. 

One minute later an unsuspected martial hawk-eagle 



160 LAWLESS LITTLE LOVE 

precipitated himself out of a big, hoary, old fig-tree, a 
hundred yards away from the fowlhouse, on to one of 
the genets' disappearing tails. This is the world's most 
general view of a genet, by the way — its disappearing 
tail ; and it is given to very few to see the beautiful, 
dark-blotched, creamy, little, lithe, long beast that the 
ringed tail belongs to. Of course, the eagle was too 
late. 

Two minutes later, a late leopard, returning to his 
lair after a blank night's hunt, saw the tail of the 
female genet, who was leading, disappear into a hollow 
tree. The male had not time to get in as the leopard 
sprang, so he shot up another tree close by, disturbing 
a mamba cobra, whose color was green, and whose bite 
was death, as it lay asleep among the twined vines. 
The legless terror fell to the ground and streaked for 
its hole, and the following leopard only just managed 
to bound out of its way as it did so. 

Then, leaping light as thistle-down, coughing harshly, 
the leopard went up the tree after the male genet, and 
appeared to have cut him off from life and liberty for 
ever. 

The genet climbed beautifully, and dodged round the 
tree-bole, and in and out among the trails and the leaf- 
bunches of matted creepers, with amazing speed ; but the 
whole time the leopard's paw, all hooked claws bared, 
was whip-whip-whipping the air, only just behind that 
lovely, long, ringed tail of the genet, and more than 
once touched it. 

Finally, hard driven, panting, at the end of his tether, 
it seemed, the genet was forced out upon a branch, 
farther and farther, slowly and more slowly, the leopard 
creep, creep, creeping, almost flat, well spread and 



LAWLESS LITTLE LOVE 161 

craftily, his paw, well out in front, hooking at the 
luckless little genet, till the twigs began to bend under 
the poor hunted creature, and all hope seemed gone 
from him, for the ground was sixteen feet below, and 
there was nothing between. And then — ah ! but it was 
a fine effort ! — just when it seemed that he could go no 
farther, and that the next terrible hooking round-arm 
stroke of the leopard must fish him into the annihilating 
scrunch of the terrible jaws, whose foul, hot breath 
already played upon him, the genet sprang. 

It was a wonderful spring; the little beast had gath- 
ered every last ounce of his strength for it, and he 
literally seemed to sail out upon the air. Sixteen feet 
to the ground he bounded, and twenty-two feet out from 
the bole of the tree he landed, and — well, what d'you 
think of that? 

Quick was the leopard — to our eyes he seemed to 
come down almost on the heels of the genet — but not 
quick enough, for he had first to gather himself on an 
uncertain, swaying footing. Wherefore, by the time 
he got to the ground, bounding like some great rubber 
ball, he had the pleasure of seeing the male genet's tail 
vanishing also into the small hole in the hollow tree. 

And there he left them, because perforce he could do 
nothing else. And there, too, we leave them, curled up 
side by side in the darkness and safety, reconciled, and 
a happy couple at last. 



X 

THE KING'S SON 

They found the king's son lying in a bed of reeds 
with his sister, the king's daughter, and although the 
prince and princess fought royally, as befitted their 
rank, they were smothered up roughly in sacks and 
carried speedily — the queen might return at any mo- 
ment and want the captors — to the Governor of all 
the Provinces, and the Governor spake thus : 

" Oho ! A royal pair, eh? They shall be sent to the 
capital, but first we must put them in an inclosure 
while we knock up some kind of a cage." 

And into " an inclosure " were they, therefore, cast, 
and it was small and bare, but for one box with dried 
grass in it ; and the walls of the place were of corrugated 
iron nine feet high, so that escape looked impossible. 
Ransom was out of the question, and rescue a wild, but 
still faintly possible, dream — they could even then hear 
their father speaking in a mighty voice very far away, 
but their mother, they knew, would be following their 
trail in terrible silence. 

Meantime they were king's children, and it behooved 
them to carry themselves as such in the presence of the 
enemy. Wherefore did they neither cry nor grieve 
(outwardly), nor sulk, nor cast themselves down or 
about with despair or rage. They just sat down side 

162 



THE KING'S SON 163 

by side, and put their heads together, and stared with 
haughty insolence at the common crowd, " the lesser 
breeds without the law," who gathered to inspect them. 
It is not every day men get a chance to spit at and 
make mock of a king's son, whose father, as like as not, 
killed one's mother or little brother with no more 
thought than you or I would kill a rabbit, and the crowd 
made the most of that chance. 

But luckily night, who was their godfather, came 
stalking swiftly westward, as he does in those wild parts, 
and flung his protecting cloak over them, and the crowd 
melted to its fleshpots, and the magic of the dark 
settled down over all. 

One by one the little lights twinkled out in the huts 
and tents of their captors, and the deep bass drone of 
men's voices within mingled with the shrill cackle of 
women, and the high song of the mosquitoes without; 
and the smell of cooking and tobacco together came to 
them, so that they sniffed aloofly and stirred from their 
places. 

A pariah dog, lean and yellow, came to eye them 
furtively through the chinks of the corrugated iron, and 
the horses snorted and stamped in their pickets, as the 
night breeze carried to them their scent. 

Time passed, and the shrill voices of the women-folk 
ceased, the deep mutter of the men died gradually down, 
the lights faded, the scene was lit up only here and there 
by the sudden glow of a fire kicked into blaze by a 
sentry, but the song of the mosquitoes never ceased. 

Then arose and uprose the strange, uncanny voices 
of the night, which, taken together, made up a back- 
ground to the great silence which they seemed to 
accentuate. And the king's son bounded again. They 



164 THE KING'S SON 

were to him as a mighty call, those voices, from his own 
land — the land of the wilderness. 

The rumbling thunder of his father's rage, breathing 
of death and destruction, had ceased now ; but there 
were plenty more sounds, and the king's son, listening, 
knew them all. The distant " Qua-ha-ha ! " of a troop 
of zebras going to drink ; the peculiar snort of an 
impala antelope, scenting danger; the far-away drum- 
ming of hoofs of a startled herd of hartebeests ; the 
bleat of an eland calf, pulled down by who knows what; 
the " Hoot-toot ! " of a hippopotamus, going out to 
grass ; the sudden shrill " Ya-ya-ya-ya ! " of a black- 
backed jackal close at hand ; the yarly, snarly whines of 
a hunting leopard; the snap of a crocodile's jaws, some- 
where down in the nearby river ; and, last, but by no 
means least in ghostliness, the awful rising " Who-oo ! " 
followed by a sudden mad chorus of maniacal laughter, 
which told that somewhere a gathering of hyenas were 

— at their work ! 

The king's son was moving about the prison now, 
examining what he could see — especially of the walls 

— with his wonderful, proud eyes, and what he could 
not with whiskers and nose. He made no sound, of 
course — not so much as a whisper ; and when his sister 
joined him, they were simply intangible, half-guessed 
shapes, drifting — there is no other word for it — 
through the gloom. 

A man, even a colored one, might look long into that 
inclosure and, unless he caught the sudden smolder at 
the back of their eyes, never tell where they were. 
Indeed, the inclosure was in pitch-darkness itself, by 
reason of its high " tin " walls ; and even when a weird 



THE KING'S SON 165 

yellow moon came and hung itself up to add to the 
general uncanniness of the scene, the prison of the 
king's son showed only like a well of ink. 

Suddenly the silence and the voices of the crickets 
w r ere broken into by the sound of scramblings by night. 
A nightjar fled from the tree overhead to the accom- 
paniment of strange noises; and an unseen jackal, who 
had crept up to the very huts pessimistically, in search 
of anything awful, or offal, fled with a startled scurry. 
Apparently something with claws was trying to scrape 
away the corrugated iron. 

Came then a scrawling scrape, and a thump. Then 
silence. But after a bit the noises began again — a 
fresh lot, and more violent. The pariah dog, who had 
come to investigate with his tail in the air, went away 
again, and quickly, with his tail between his legs ; and 
in the same moment the king's son's head appeared over 
the top of the corrugated iron wall in silhouette against 
the staring, surprised moon. 

Of course, and quite naturally, every sentry was 
asleep, or else even they could not have failed to realize 
that the sounds of desperate scratchings that followed 
were no ordinary phenomena, and might bear looking 
into. 

Presently the king's son's body followed his head, and 
he sat for a moment, balancing clumsily on that narrow 
top, before vanishing suddenly, to the accompaniment 
of a heavy thump that was the last sound he made in 
the place. 

Further and even more frantic scratchings followed, 
and anon the king's daughter, who certainly meant to 
die rather than be left alone in the hands of the foe, 



166 THE KING'S SON 

eclipsed the moon. A pause, and she, too, vanished 
downwards with a thump that was the last sound she 
made there in that place also. 

A minute later, and she had joined her brother under 
the thorny guard of a mimosa. 

For a moment or two the pair stood rigid as rock 
carvings, looking back, crouched a little, and deadly 
silent. Then the king's son turned and led the way 
to the river at a loping trot, and his sister followed in 
his tracks. They shook the dust — literally and 
daintily as a cat shakes dew from her feet — of the 
hated captors' fastness from their feet in little momen- 
tary halts as they went, and the place knew them no 
more. 

But there is one point I should like to insert here. 
Go and try to climb over a corrugated iron wall nine 
feet high, and with nothing but the bare earth to take 
off from, and see how you succeed. Further, when 
doing it, remember that these royal children were so 
young as to be little more than babies. Then you may 
tell how thi'v accomplished the feat. I do not know 
exactly to this day. 

It is to be hoped that by this time everybody will be 
aware that the king's son and the king's daughter were 
lion cubs, the survivors, therefore the strongest and the 
fittest, of three lion cubs in a litter. It required, you 
will admit, some resource, courage, and intelligence to 
do what they had already done, considering their age; 
but the worst was to come. Having got out of the 
frying-pan, they must now face the fire, and be quick 
about it, too, if they didn't want to be traced and re- 
captured at dawn. 

Arrived at the river's edge, they stopped and stared 



THE KING'S SON 167 

out across the dark swirls and unknown, cold depths. 
Lion cubs, as also the young of every other African 
animal, must assuredly be born with an instinctive and 
a very lively dread of all rivers and their occupants. 
Any horrible invention of death, they must have known, 
might be expected to lurk there, ready waiting for them 
in that underworld of dark waters ; but if they felt 
fear, they never showed it, and the pride of their birth 
held true. Their hesitation was only momentary. The 
terror had to be faced, bravely or fearfully, as they 
would, but still faced, and bravely it was done. 

Slowly and coolly the king's son waded out into the 
black, chill waters. He felt the current, which was 
strong, plucking like invisible great fingers at his legs ; 
he felt the cold strike through tawny, spotted fur and 
skin to his belly, but he never looked back. His feet 
were whirled from under him ; he trod upon nothing, 
cold, cold emptiness, and that was enough to terrify any 
grown beast, let alone a baby; but he struck out right 
manfully, and his fine eyes and face took on that regal 
expression of haughty determination that you see in the 
face only of King Leo himself and his mate, and in no 
other beast in the world. And the king's daughter un- 
hesitatingly followed — a real princess, by gad, sirs ! 

Steadily the pair swam, heading instinctively, one 
presumes, up-stream, to counteract the drift of the 
ever-shouldering current. There was, perhaps, from 
two to five feet of water under their sturdy paws ; but 
had it been twenty or thirty, I, personally, believe it 
would have made no difference. There were probably 
also other things under and around their sturdy paws 
— things very much worse and less innocent than any 
water — things they must have, dimly, at any rate, if 



168 THE KING'S SON 

not acutely, been aware of in an inbred sort of way; 
but they made no difference either. 

" Make way for the king's son and the king's 
daughter. It is their will to cross the river. Hear, 
all of you loathly horrors, you lurking terrors — make 
way. Who dares check the will of the king's son? " 

Once there came a mighty swirl on their right hand 
— or right paw, if you like — and the waters parted, 
with waves and the spouts of a geyser, to give up the 
monstrous nightmare head of a hippopotamus. Once 
something cold and leathery and ghastly touched the 
bottom of their padded feet ; and once — but this was 
too awful for any expression by pen — something else, 
equally cold, but smooth, coiled, writhing, round the 
king's son's left hind-leg, but providentially slid clear 
again, as he kicked like a budding International. 

Then came the ordeal. It arrived in the shape of 
two knobs, that just were suddenly, and remained, mo- 
tionless in the mocking moonlight, on the surface of 
the water. It might have been merely some projection 
from a half-sunken log. It might, but — well, there 
had grown in the air an unspeakable stench of musk, and 
that wasn't there before the knobs showed up. 

Both lion cubs saw, both little royal ones smelt, and 
in some dim way, warned probably by a terrible knowl- 
edge handed down to them from their ancestors, both 
bab} r swimmers knew. Terror — real terror, of the 
white-livered, surrender-or-stampede-blindly-at-any- " 
price kind — could never, it seems to me, come into 
those fine, regal eyes ; but the nearest approach that 
was possible occurred in that instant, and they swam. 
Ah, how those infant lions swam ! What had gone be- 
fore' was mere paddling ; and whether or not they had 



THE KING'S SON 169 

ever swum before in their short lives — and I doubt it 
more than a little — there could be no question about 
them now ; they swam like practiced hands, and almost 
as fast. 

Followed a pause, terrifying enough in all conscience, 
and then, slowly, silently as a submarine's conning- 
tower goes under, so dived those knobs, and vanished 
almost, not quite, without a ripple. 

The cool night-air showed the breath coming from 
the broad, brave, water-frilled cubs' heads in gasps. 
The silence gave away their frantic panting. You 
could literally see them straining every baby nerve and 
muscle, could note the jerks with which they fairly 
kicked themselves along. And the opposite bank, a 
black wall of bush and reeds, was very near now, yet 
far — oh, how far, to them ! 

Ssee-shhrr-r-rr-r-shrhh ! 

As a torpedo hurtles hissing along barely below the 
surface of the water, so hurtled the head — the head 
with its wicked eyes on knobs ; the head with its vast, 
scaly, long snout, its raised nostrils at the tip, its shud- 
dering array of jagged teeth, its awful, armed, diaboli- 
cal aspect of conscious power — straight at the king's 
son. Without warning had it come, and with still less 
had it attacked. 

Swim, oh, swim, little king's son, for your very life! 

But the king's son did not swim — at least, not in 
that sense. He turned. Yes, that is right — turned ; 
and the monstrosity of the armed snout, that same 
being a crocodile, of course, was upon him even as he 
did so. There would have been no time to turn after 
— no life 1 Still, the king's son may not have known 
that. Maybe he turned, as a man attacked by a dog 



170 THE KING'S SON 

does, because he felt, in a cold, nervy sort of spasm all 
up his spine, the terrible defenselessness of his hind- 
limbs. And as he turned, he struck — bat-bat ! — 
struck with all his talons unsheathed ; struck with every 
ounce and grain of power, and force of brain to back 
that power, in his s} T stem ; struck as only a cornered cat 
can strike ; struck like a — lion. 

The result was astounding. 

The crocodile had aimed, true to a hair — you bet, 
he being a croc. — to grab the king's son's hindlegs, and 
pull him under. He had not reckoned on the turn, and 
the turn did it. His snout struck hindlegs, which were 
not where they ought, by his calculations, to have been, 
but were four or five inches away to one side. 

Quick as only a reptile can be, he canted, to remedy 
the error, but the impetus of his ten-foot bulk was still 
upon him ; it carried him by. You cannot stop ten 
feet of bulk and five-feet-seven of girth of flesh and 
bone and muscle and armor-plates, going at Old Nick 
may know how many knots, in half-a-yard, you know; 
and it was the half-a-yard that did the trick. 

The king's son was aware, as he half-rose and de- 
livered that desperate blow, of a mighty bulk shooting 
by, of an overpowering, sickening stench of musk, and 
of eyes, through the foam and the water — two little, 
wicked, unspeakably cruel eyes on knobs. 

His chance! And, quick as light, he took it. 
Ough! 

The rest was chaos. 

And that is about all, I think — unless you would 
like to know that their mother, the king's consort, who 
had been working grimly along on their trail since dusk, 
slid«swiftly down the bank in that crisis, a fiery-eyed, 



THE KING'S SON 171 

long, gliding shape, and plunging into the watery in- 
ferno utterly recklessly, brought out, one by one, 
dripping, shivering, and by the scruff of the neck, first 
the king's son, then the king's daughter, and stopped 
not till she had placed them high up the bank, safe 
among the thorn-scrub, where they crouched together, 
side by side, listening to the cataclysmal threshings of 
the blind devil down in the black waters below there ; 
and their father, the king, came up — pad-pad-pad-pad 
— behind them, to thunder out defiance at all the world 
above their sturdy, broad, intelligent heads, and purr 
his joy at their return. Moreover, he looked proud as 
he stood there in the moonlight, that royal beast ; and I 
like to think it w^as not all looks either. 



XI 
THE HIGHWAYMAN OF THE MARSH 

There was some sort of violent trouble going on 
down in the reeds beside the dike. The reed-buntings 

— some people might easily have mistaken them for 
sparrows, with their black heads and white mustaches 

— said so, swa} T ing and balancing upon the bending 
reeds, and calling the makers of that trouble names in 
a harsh voice. 

And all the rest of the reed-people were saying so, 
too. It was an amazing thing how full of wild-folk that 
apparently deserted reed-patch was. Each bit of the 
landscape, each typical portion, is a world of its own, 
with its special kind of population. This one pro- 
duced unexpectedly a pair of sedge-warblers and a reed- 
warbler, atoms who gyrated and grated their annoy- 
ance; a willow-tit, who made needle-point rebukes; a 
water-rail, with a long beak and long legs, running 
away like a long-legged pullet ; a moorhen very much 
concerned as to her nest ; a big rat very much concerned 
as to the moorhen's nest, too, but in a different way ; a 
grass snake, who glistened as if newly painted in the 
sun ; and a spotted crake, who is even more of a run- 
ning winged ventriloquial mystery than the corn-crake 
of our childhood's hay-times. 

All of them were on thorns — though on reeds, really 

— and evidently highly rattled and in a state of nerves 

172 



THE HIGHWAYMAN 173 

over the trouble in the reeds. And not much wonder 
either, for, judging by the sounds, murder was being 
done in there among the secret recesses of the swishing 
green stems — murder cruel and violent, in spite of the 
sunshine and the light of day. 

And then, all of a sudden, in the midst of almost a 
gasp of silent horror, a moment of speechlessness on the 
part of the wild lookers-on, out came the trouble, roll- 
ing over and over and over upon the soft, short-cropped 
grass of the dike-bank, and — they all saw. Also, they 
all, except the little warblers, who were safe, more or 
less, and stayed to blaspheme the public nuisance, in- 
stantly and at the same moment remembered appoint- 
ments elsewhere, and went to keep them with a haste 
that was noticeable and wonderful. 

There before them was a hare. But a hare is a 
gentle and altogether negligible wild-person. This 
hare, however, was fighting, and fighting like several 
furies, and grunting, and making all sorts of unharelike 
motions and commotions against another beast ; and 
that other beast was most emphatically not a hare. 

It — or, rather, he — was big, as we count big- 
ness among four-footed wild-folk in Britain to-day. 
Probably he could stretch the tape to twenty-three 
inches, of which about sixteen consisted of very long, 
low body, with sturdy, bear-like, dumpy legs, the rest 
being rather thick, furry tail ; and, though nobody — 
without steel armor — might have cared to take on the 
job of weighing him alive, he would have turned the 
scale at about two pounds eight ounces, or perhaps a 
bit more. Not a big beast, you will say; but in the 
wild he ruled big, being snaky and of a fighting turn, so 
to say, He was, in fact, the very devil, and he looked 



174 THE HIGHWAYMAN 

it — hard as nickel-steel. A dull, tawny devil, with a 
peculiar purplish sheen in some lights — due to the 
longer hair — on his short, hard coat, turning black 
on his throat, legs, and tail — as if he had walked in 
black somewhere — and finished off with patches of 
creamy white on head and ears. There was an extraor- 
dinary air of hard, tough, cool, cruel, fighting-power 
and slow ferocity about the beast — a very natural 
born gladiator of the wild places. 

Men called him polecat, apropos of nothing about 
him, apparently, for he had no connection with poles 
or cats ; or foumart, apropos — and you wouldn't have 
needed to be told if you had got to leeward of him just 
then — of his very unroselike smell — that is, fou — 
foul, mart — marten, his nearest relation ; or, again, 
fitchett, as our forefathers termed him. 

But never mind. What's in a name, anyway? A 
big doe-hare, with a leveret or two not for sale — and 
that doe's leverets must have been in the rushes some- 
where — may, upon occasion, show unexpected fighting- 
powers. And this one did. The polecat was kicked in 
the stomach, and kicked and scratched in the ribs, and 
thumped on the nose, and kicked and scratched and 
thumped on the head, before he could get in the death- 
stroke, the terrible lightning-thrust at the brain's base, 
which, like the sword-stroke that ends the bull-fight, 
dropped the victim as if struck by electricity. 

And then he had whirled, and darted headlong for 
the reeds. He galloped in an odd, jumpy, sidelong 
gallop, as if he were a sort of glorified wild dachshund. 

It did not take him long to inspect the reed-patch, to 
search it from end to end with his nose. His mind was 
soon made up to the fact that the wretched leverets had 



THE HIGHWAYMAN 175 

vanished, and that no scenting of his keen nose could 
find them. They had gone, evidently, quitted, like the 
pair of obedient children that they were, while their 
mother was cleverly holding the foe, and making demon- 
strations in his front. And now the pair of them were 
probably far away, lost past all finding among the 
mazes of the fields. And there was nothing for him to 
do but go and dine upon the old hare, which he did, 
taking, according to his custom, little more than a bite 
and a sip before passing on. 

Then he turned and meandered off on the war-path. 
And this was a serious business, and a busy one. It was 
downright hard labor, for he worked his ground prop- 
erly and for all it was worth, having a lot to kill, and 
not much time to kill it in. 

At times he sat bolt-upright, and stared knowingly 
around — because his short legs gave him such a limited 
view otherwise. At times he climbed a mole-heap. At 
other times he hunted head down — and again one 
noticed the hound-like manner — in every possible di- 
rection, questing, casting here, casting there, working 
back, throwing forward, describing circles, and poking 
into and out of every reed-patch, bramble-heap, furze- 
clump, or other bit of cover that that coverless land 
offered. 

And then suddenly he stopped. And then suddenly 
he ran forward. And then suddenly, the scent carrying 
him right smack-bang out into the open, he dropped flat 
and began to crawl. 

He crept and he crept and he crept across that abso- 
lutely bare, flat ground, with never a tuft of fur or a 
feather of a single live thing upon it to be seen, till one 
might have thought that he had gone mad, and was 



176 THE HIGHWAYMAN 

stalking an illusion — as many, not beasts, have done 
before him ; only they were men, and blew their brains 
out — or went bankrupt instead — afterwards. 

Finally he stopped. And this was the oddest thing 
of all, because, if any creature could show intense ex- 
citement without showing it — that is to say, without 
muscle, eyelid, hair, or limb moving — that polecat did 
then. And yet, stare as one would upon the absolutely 
bare grass, dotted only here and there with a stone, or 
a rat's skull, or a daisy — all looking alike in their 
whiteness from a distance — not a living, breathing 
thing was to be seen. 

And yet there was a living, breathing thing there. 
Indeed, there were several. It was only the eye that 
was deceived, not the nose — at least, not the polecat's 
nose — by motionlessness. 

Right in front of the polecat, within spring, still as 
the very ground, the huffish, whitish check of a peewit, 
lap-wing, or green plover would have been mistaken for 
one of the many stones ; the thin, curving top-knot for 
a stem of the thin, harsh grass ; the low curve of the 
dark back, with its light reflections in green, for no 
more than the natural curve of the close-cropped turf. 
And she was on her nest, which was no nest, but a 
scrape, backing her natural assimilation with her sur- 
roundings to see her through. 

And the polecat knew she was there, and he knew she 
was on her nest — she would not have been fool enough 
to keep there otherwise. His nose told him — not his 
eyes, I think, for that was nearly impossible. The 
thing was, he wanted her to move. That was what he 
was waiting for. No more than the twitch of an eyelid 
would do to show which end was head and which tail; 



THE HIGHWAYMAN 177 

for he could only smell her, and, in a manner, would 
have to pounce blind if she did not move. 

She did not move, however, and in the end he had to 
pounce blind, anyhow, so suddenly, so unexpectedly, 
when it did come, shifting like a streak, that there 
seemed to have been no time to shout even, or gasp. 

Yet that peewit found time in that fraction of a 
second to rise, open her wings, and get two feet into 
the air. And then the polecat took her, leaping with 
unexpected agility, and pulling her down out of limit- 
less freedom and safety. There was just a rush, a 
snap, a wild-bird squawk, and down the pair went, to 
the accompaniment of furiously fluttering wings and in 
a cloud of feathers. 

She had made a slight mistake in her calculations, 
that peewit, a matter of perhaps a quarter of a second, 
but enough. Nature has not got much room for those 
who commit slight mistakes in the wild, I guess ; they 
mostly quit the stage before passing that habit on, or 
soon after. 

For a moment there was a horrible, strenuous jumble 
of fur and feathers on the ground, and then the pole- 
cat's flat head rose up on his long neck out of the 
jumble, his eyes alight with a new look, and his lifted 
upper lip stained with a single little bright carmine 
spot. The peewit was dead. 

He pivoted upon his shanks and examined the nest. 
It was empty. 

He got to his feet with rapidity, and, in great excite- 
ment, dropped his head and began hunting. In a 
minute a mottled pebble seemed to get up under his nose 
and run. He snapped at it, and it fell upon the grass, 
stretching out slowly in death — a baby peewit. 



178 THE HIGHWAYMAN 

He circled rapidly, stopped, swerved, and, at the 
canter, took up another scent. Suddenly, in a tussock 
of marram, his nose and he stopped dead. Nothing 
moved. Then he bit, and a second buff-and-black- 
mottled soft body stretched slowly out into the open as 
death took it — a second baby peewit. He circled 
again, fairly racing now, and so nearly fell over a third 
pebble come to life that it scuttled back between his 
legs ; but he spun upon himself like a snake, and caught 
it ere it had gone a yard. He snapped again, held it, 
dropped it, and another downy, soft, warm chick thing 
straightened, horribly and pathetically, in the unpity- 
ing sun, and was still — a third baby peewit. 

But there were no more. He hunted around and 
around for the next ten minutes, but never struck a 
trail. Evidently there had been only three. And all 
the time father-peewit, who had just come back from 
dinner, swooped, and stooped, and dived, and rocketed, 
and shot down and around, his wings humming through 
the still air above as he went clean mad, and seemed 
like to break his neck and the polecat's back in any 
and every one of his demented abysmal plunges, but 
somehow never did quite. 

And all the time, also, the polecat, without seeming 
to take the slightest notice of him, was w T atching him 
out of the corner of his eye, waiting, hoping for a 
chance while he hunted. 

But this was not intended as an exhibition of 
" f rightfulness," though the beast had slain far more 
innocents than he could eat. It was part of his duty ; 
and though men have accused his kind of being pos- 
sessed of a joy of killing, the accusation is by no means 
proven. And, in any case, the accused might reply to 



THE HIGHWAYMAN 179 

civilization, " Same to you, sir, and many hundreds of 
times more so." 

Anyway, he now picked up a young peewit and made 
for the nearest dike; then along this, and presently 
into the water and across to the other side, swimming 
strongly and well ; then along a smaller dike, hugging 
the reeds as much as possible, and pursued by a run- 
ning fire of abuse from the sedge and marsh and grass- 
hopper warblers, from wagtails, meadow-pipits, reed- 
buntings, larks, and all the small-bird population of 
those parts, till he came to the sea-bank, called by the 
natives " sea-wall." This was a high, grass-bearded 
bank designed to constrain the waters of the estuary, 
and there, in a hole, curtained by a dandelion and 
guarded by the stiff spears of the coarse marram 
grass, he stuffed his victim. 

The burrow was not empty when he came to it, for 
it already contained two moorhens' eggs ; but there was 
still room for more, and one by one he fetched the re- 
mainder of his victims, mother and all, that way, and 
stuffed them into the burrow, with a plodding, steady, 
exact doggedness of purpose that was rather surprising 
in a mere wild beast who, if seen casually, would have 
appeared to the ordinary man to be merely aimlessly 
wandering about the landscape. And, mind you, this 
was not quite such a simple and " soft " job as it 
looked. Grit was needed to accomplish it, even. 

There was, for instance, the sudden, far too sug- 
gestive, swirl in the w T ater as he crossed the dike for 
the third time, loaded, that gave more than a hint of 
some unknown — and therefore the more sinister — 
haunter of those muddied depths of pollution, who took 
a more than passing interest in the smell of blood, and 



180 THE HIGHWAYMAN 

must, to judge by the swirl, have been too big to be 
safe. And that was probably a giant female eel, as 
dangerous a foe as any swimmer of his size — though 
he ate eels — might care to face. Then there was the 
marsh-harrier — and the same might have been a kind 
of owl if it wasn't a sort of hawk — who flapped up 
like some gigantic moth, and dogged his steps, only 
waiting — he felt sure of it — for the polecat to slip, 
or meet a foe, or have an accident, or something, before 
breaking its own avine neutrality. Then, too, there 
was the stoat, or, rather, not the stoat only, but the 
stoat and his wife, who would have murdered him if 
they had dared, and took to shadowing and watching 
him from cover in the most meaning sort of way. And, 
finally, there was the lean, nosing, sneaking dog, the 
egg-thief, who had no business there with his yolk- 
spattered, slobbering jaws, plundering the homes of the 
wild feathered ones — he who was only a tame slave, 
and a bad one at that. But the dog followed the pole- 
cat into a jungle-like reed fastness, and — almost never 
came out again ! When he did, it was to the accompani- 
ment of varied and assorted howls, and at about the 
biggest thing in the speed line he had ever evolved. He 
was no end glad to get out, and the distant haze swal- 
lowed him wonderfully quickly, still howling every yard 
of the way — for, mark you, that polecat's teeth, once 
felt, were nothing to laugh at or forget. 

These things he accomplished as the night was be- 
ginning to fall, and the solemn eye of the setting sun 
— such an eye of such a setting sun as the estuary 
alone knows; bloodshot, and in a sky asmoke as of cities 
burning — regarded him as he finished and stood back 
outside as one who considers. He was a grim figure of 



THE HIGHWAYMAN 181 

outlawry and rapine, alone there in that lonely place, 
amidst the gathering, dank gray of the marsh mists, the 
red rays touching his coat and turning it to deep 
purple, and his eyes to dull ruby flame; a beast, once 
seen, you would not forget, and could never mistake. 

But his work was not yet done. He was hungry 
again, but for him there could be no more food yet, 
and he turned with the same immutable and dumbly 
dogged air that characterized so many of his actions, 
and made off down the " sea-bank." Once he hid — 
vanished utterly would better express it — to avoid the 
passage of an eel-spearer, an inhabitant of the estuary 
almost as amphibious and mysterious as himself. Once 
he very nearly caught a low-flying snipe as he leapt up 
at it while cutting low over the top of the " bank " ; 
and once — here he sprang aside with a half-stifled snarl 
and every bristle erect — he was very nearly caught by 
a horrible steel-toothed trap, set there to entertain that 
same dog we have already met, by reason of the small 
matter of a late lamb or two that had suddenly de- 
veloped bites, obviously not self-inflicted, in the night. 

Then he crossed the dike at the foot of the sea-wall, 
shook himself, sat down to scratch, and straightway 
hurled himself backwards and to one side, as something 
that resembled a javelin whizzed out of six straggling, 
upright, faded, tawny reeds at the water's edge, by 
which he had sat down. The javelin struck deep into 
the little circle of lightly-pressed-down grass where his 
haunches had rested, and he caught a glimpse, or only 
a half-glimpse, of weird onyx eyes, and heard strange 
and shuddery reptilian hissings. Eyes and noises 
might have belonged to a crocodile, or some huge lizard 
thing, or snapping turtle; but the javelin was clearly 



i82 THE HIGHWAYMAN 

the property of no such horror, and was very obviously 
a beak — now, by the way, withdrawn. 

Followed the harsh rattle and the swish of big 
feathers and vast wings — he felt the draught of them 
— the dim outline, as it were, of a ghost, of some great 
shape rising into the gloom, and as instantly vanishing 
over the sea-" wall," and he was alone, and — there 
were now three upright and faded reeds in the clump 
near which he had sat him down by the water's edge to 
scratch, not six. The Thing, the portent, the appari- 
tion, or whatever you like to call it, had been the other 
three; yet you could have sworn to the six reeds before 
it moved. And the worst of it was that he did not 
know from frogs and fresh water what the Thing was. 
He had never glimpsed such a sudden death before, and 
had no burning desire to do so again, for he was shrewd 
enough to know that, but for that fling-back of his, 
the javelin would have struck him, and struck him like 
a stuck pig, perhaps through the skull ! Oh, polecat ! 
The bird was a bittern, relation of the herons, only 
brown, and if not quite so long, made up for it in 
strength and fiery, highly developed courage. 

Caution is not the polecat's trump card, as it is the 
cat's, but if ever he trod carefully, it was thence on- 
wards, as he threaded the dike-cut and pool-dotted 
gloom. He came upon a lone bull bellowing, and gave 
him room. He came upon something unknown, but 
certainly not a lone bull, bellowing too ; it was the bit- 
tern, and he gave that plenty of room. He came upon 
two moorhens, fighting as if to the death, but he was 
the death ; and slew one of them from behind neatly, 
and had to go back with it, past both bellowings, to a 
second burrow in the sea-bank, where he put it; and 



THE HIGHWAYMAN 183 

later he came upon only seven great, mangy? old, 
stump-tailed, scarred, horrible ghouls of shore rats, all 
mobbing a wounded seagull — a herring-gull — with a 
broken wing. 

The gull lived, but that was no fault of the polecat's, 
for she managed to run off into the surrounding dark- 
ness what time he was dealing warily but effectively with 
one of those yellow-toothed devils of murderous rats — 
whose bite is poison — in what dear, kind-hearted people 
might have said was a most praiseworthy rescue of the 
poor, dear, beautiful bird. (The poor, dear, beautiful 
bird, be it whispered, had herself swallowed a fat- 
cheeked and innocent-eyed baby rabbit whole that very 
day, before she was wounded; but never mind.) 

The polecat, after one wary sniff, did not seem to 
think the rat worthy of a journey to the sea-bank and 
decent burial, and passed on, the richer for a drink of 
rat's blood, perhaps, but very hungry. He came upon 
a redshank's nest in a tuft of grass. 

The redshank, who has much the cut of a snipe, plus 
red-orange legs, must have heard or seen him coming 
in the new, thin moonlight, and told all the marsh about 
it with a shrieking whistled, " Tyop ! tyop ! " But the 
nest contained four eggs, which the polecat took in lieu 
of anything bigger, carrying two — one journey for 
each — all the way to the sea-bank, to yet another 
hole he had previously scraped, or found, therein. One 
of the other two eggs he consumed himself, and was just 
making off with number four, when something came 
galloping over the marsh in the moonlight, splashing 
through the pools, and making, in that silence, no end 
of a row for a wild creature. 

The polecat stood quite still, with his long back 



184 THE HIGHWAYMAN 

arched, his sturdy, short forepaws anchored tense, and 
his short, rounded ears alert, and watched it come, not 
because he wanted to, but because there did not happen 
to be any cover thereabouts, and to move might give 
him away. 

When he saw that the beast was long and low, and 
short-legged and flat-headed, his long outer fur began 
to bristle. Those outlines were the trade-marks of his 
own tribe — not his own species only — and were, he 
knew, more likely to mean tough trouble than anything 
else. Then he realized that the path of the new arrival 
would take it right towards him, and that was bad, be- 
cause to move now and get out of the way was hopeless. 
Also, he could see the size of the beast now, and that 
was worse than bad — some ten inches to a foot worse. 

The beast held a wild-duckling in its jaws, and the 
little body, with its stuck-out webbed feet, flapped and 
flopped dismally from side to side, as the animal can- 
tered along with a somewhat shuffling, undulating gait. 
And then the polecat became transfixed. He had recog- 
nized the new-comer. He knew the breed, and would 
have given a lot not to have molested that redshank's 
abode and be found there. 

The strange beast — palpably a large, sinuous, and 
wicked proposition — came right up to the polecat, 
standing there rigid, erect, motionless, and alone in the 
moonlight, with the fourth egg between his paws, and 
then stopped dead, almost touching him. Apparently, 
it saw him for the first time. Certainly it was not 
pleased; it said so under its breath, in a low growl. 

The polecat said nothing, perhaps because he had 
nothing to say. 



THE HIGHWAYMAN 185 

The beast was an otter, and an old one. Also, it 
appeared to be suffering from a " grouch." 

The polecat felt uncomfortable. He was eyeing the 
other's throat, and marking just the place where he 
meant to take hold, if things came to the worst ; but he 
knew all the time that the otter, although its eyes had 
never been removed for a fraction of a second off his 
face, was really watching the egg. The otter was a 
female ; probably she had young to feed ; the presence 
of the duckling darkly hinted at it. If so, so much 
the worse for the polecat. 

Then the otter put down her duckling, and growled 
again ; but the polecat might have been carved in un- 
barked oak for all the sign of life that he gave. Then 
— she sailed in. 

It was really very neatly and prettily done, for, as an 
exponent of lithesome agility, the otter is — when the 
pine-marten is not by — certainly quite It. The pole- 
cat seemed to side-twist double, making some sort of 
lightning-play with his long neck and body as she came, 
and — he got his hold. Yes, he got his hold all right. 
The only thing was to stay there ; for, as he was a 
polecat and a member of the great, the famous, weasel 
tribe, part of his fighting creed was to stay there. 

When, however, hounds fail to puncture an otter's 
hide, any beast might be pardoned for losing its grip ; 
but he did not. Between the tame hounds' fangs and 
his smaller wild ones was some difference — about the 
difference between our teeth and a savage's, multiplied 
once or twice ; and the old she-otter, who had felt 
hounds' teeth in her life, realized the difference. Also, 
it hurt, and the polecat did not lose his hold. 



186 THE HIGHWAYMAN 

Then, maddened, wild with rage, the rage of one who 
expects a walk-over and receives a bad jolt instead, that 
old she-otter really got to w r ork. She recoiled like 
a coiled snake, and the polecat felt fire in one loin. 

It looked like the contortions of one big, furry beast 
twisted with cramp, by the moonlight. You could not 
possibly separate the combatants, or tell that there 
were two. But the polecat only fought because he 
dared not expose his flank with the foe facing him. 
Now, however, as they both rolled he — 

Hi ! It was done in an instant. At a moment when 
the roll brought him on top, and when the otter was 
shifting her own hold for another, and more deadly, 
which might have " put him to sleep " forever, he 
miraculously twisted and writhed, eel-fashion, and with 
one mighty wrench — a good strip of his skin and fur 
had to go in that pull, but it couldn't be helped — he 
had broken the other's hold, leapt clear of the clinch, 
and was gone. 

The otter was up before you could guess what had 
happened, and was drumming away on his heels ; but 
she soon pulled up, realizing that a polecat may be slow 
in the books, but not so slow in real life, with her to 
assist speed. xVnyway, she seemed slower ; and, in any 
case, she could not hope to follow him in the intricacy of 
holes and cover he was sure to take to, like a fish to 
water. Moreover, she was spitting up blood, result of 
friend polecat's neat and natty strangle-hold on her 
throat, and felt more in need of the egg — which she 
had won, at any rate — than a wild-goose chase. 

Like a thin, wavy line through the night, friend pole- 
cat betook himself to the sea-bank, to a hole in the sea- 
bank, to the very depths of that hole ; and there, in the 



THE HIGHWAYMAN 187 

shape of two angrily smoldering, luminous orbs shining 
steadily through the pit-like dark, he stayed. Most of 
the time, I fancy, he used up in licking his wounds. 
They needed it, for, though clean, the punctures from 
the otter's canines had gone deep, and a red trail of 
drops marked the polecat's route to his lair — one of 
his lairs. 

Not, be it noted, that he was entirely ignored. 
Blood-trails are always items of interest in the wild, 
especially in the dark hours while man sleeps. Thus 
there once came to the mouth of the hole scufflings, and 
the noise as of an eager, inquisitive crowd — rats, who 
hoped for a chance to get their own back on a detested 
foe. But one evil snarl from the wounded beast re- 
moved them, convinced that the time was not yet. 

Once, also, something sniffed out of the stilly night, 
and that was a fox; but one snap from within, a per- 
fectly abominable smell, and the narrowness of the 
accommodation proved too much for brer fox, and he, 
with an insolent cock of the brush, retired. 

Then, too, there was a rabbit, not looking where he 
was going, who got half-way down the burrow before he 
realized the awful truth, and went out backwards, like 
a cat with a salmon-tin on its head. 

But along towards dawn there came an altogether 
different sort of sound, somehow — a sort of a little 
chuckling sound ; and the polecat, answering it, came 
out. He looked rather less awful now than when he 
had gone in. A form was standing outside — a dark, 
low, long form, like himself; and, like himself, you could 
easily become aware of it without seeing it, even with 
your handkerchief to your nose. 

It was his wife, smaller, but no less dangerous, than 



188 THE HIGHWAYMAN 

he. She was carrying an old hen-redshank in her jaws, 
its long beak and one of its wings clearly silhouetted 
against the moon. And apparently she would be very 
pleased if her husband would come out of the hole and 
make room for her to stuff the redshank into it. 

Then, together, they moved at their indescribable, 
undulating gait — they looked like a snake between 
them in the moonlight — along the sea-bank, till they 
came, with caution and many clever tricks of vanishing, 
in case anybody might be watching, to yet another 
burrow, screened completely and very neatly guarded 
by the splayed leaves of a bunch of frosted sea-holly. 

Both beasts went into the burrow, at the end of which 
was a nest containing live things, which squirmed and 
made little, tiny, infant noises in the darkness. They 
were the polecats' children, four of them, all quite 
young, and all very hungry and very lively indeed ; and 
they explained a good deal of the reason for the stores 
of food set by in other burrows in the " sea-wall." 

But they did not explain quite all, for, unless Mrs. 
Polecat liked her dinner high — and there was nothing 
I could find in her methods to show that she did — or 
unless Mr. Polecat had got a craze for collecting speci- 
mens and eggs, or forgot where half of his trophies were 
hidden as a natural habit of absent-mindedness, one 
cannot quite see the reason for hiding so much so soon, 
before the young could feed upon the " specimens." 

However, I suppose the two beasts knew their own 
business best. The old male polecat seemed to, any- 
way, for just as the first flicker of dawn was paling the 
eastern sky he went off down to the mist-hidden dike, 
and, in no more than ten short minutes, returned with 
an eel, protesting violently in that horrible way eels 



THE HIGHWAYxMAN 189 

have, which he promptly proceeded to decapitate and 
eat. 

The afternoon had still some little time to run, when 
the waving grass down the side of the sea-bank and the 
half of a glimpse of dull tawny gave away the male 
polecat leaving his " earth " for the war-path once 
more. Was he ever anything else than on the war- 
path if he moved abroad at all? 

That, even from above, was, I swear, all the indica- 
tion he gave of his exit. Now, although it is a rule in 
the wild that self-advertisement is most unhealthful, 
there may be times when a beast like the polecat may not 
advertise itself enough. And this was one of those 
times. 

Far overhead, circling grandly on effortless, still, 
great pinions, swimming, one might say, in the dome of 
the sky, a big bird, known as a buzzard, was staring 
downwards with the flashing, sheathed glance of all 
birds of prey — and aviators — at the world below. 
She, too, had young, and simply had to find a meal. 
The hour was late, and her success nil. Perhaps that 
accounted for much. Perhaps, however, all she saw 
was that half-glimpse of dull, tawny fur, which ac- 
counted for still more; that is to say, she probably made 
a mistake. 

Anyway, the polecat was suddenly aware of a sound 
like the swish of a lady's skirt in the air above him, and 
of a dimming of the light. He sprang forward first, 
and glanced up second — knowing the rules of the wild. 
But he was too late, for instantly the long, hooked 
talons of the bird came down through the grass, and 
gripped. It was an awful handshake, for the bird was 
a buzzard, we said, who is a sort of smaller and less 



lgo THE HIGHWAYMAN 

kingly edition of the eagle, without the imperial power. 

For a few seconds there followed an awful struggle — 
great wings beating mightily downwards, beak hammer- 
ing, and fangs meeting the hammerings with audible 
clashings. It seemed that the bird could not quite lift 
the beast, and that the beast could not quite retain 
connection with solid earth. 

And then the bird rose, slowly, strainingly, with her 
vast pinions winnowing the air with deep " how-hows ! " 
Like mighty fans rose she, still gripping the struggling 
polecat hard by the back in a locked clutch of steel — 
up and up, and out over the estuar}', growing slowly 
from a great bird to a medium-sized one, to a smaller, 
and a smaller, all the time fighting, it seemed, like a 
mad creature, to gain the upper air, to climb to the 
clouds, as a drowning man fights his way upwards in 
the water. And there was reason — the old polecat's 
jaws were fast shut in a vise-grip, as of a Yale lock, 
upon her throat. 

Never a sound broke the silence that brooded for- 
ever — in spite of the wind — over the lake-like, 
flattened expanse of the estuary save the deep " how- 
how ! " of the buzzard's superb pinions as she climbed 
slowly into the sublime vault of the heavens ; never a 
sound from bird or from beast. The beast hung on, 
dumbly dogged, with fangs that met in the flesh beneath 
the stained feathers ; and the blood of the bird mingled 
with the blood of the beast as it trickled slowly down 
over his mangled head, upon which one fearful claw of 
the buzzard was clutched in an awful grip. 

The bird struggled dumbly also, upwards, ever up- 
wards, gasping, with open beak and staring eyes, fight- 
ing vainly for the breath she could not draw, till at last 



THE HIGHWAYMAN 191 

the two were no more than a speck — one little, dark, 
indefinite speck, floating athwart the great, piled, 
fleecy mountains of the clouds. 

And then, quite suddenly, so suddenly that it was 
almost like pricking a bladder, the end came. The 
magnificent, overshadowing pinions collapsed ; the bird 
reeled, toppled for an instant in the void, and then slid 
back and down, faster and faster and faster, turning 
over and over, in one long, sickening dive back to earth. 

A watcher, had there been one, might have seen, just 
as the last rays of the setting sun touched the steely 
reaches of the estuary, turning them to lakes of crim- 
son, something, somebody — or bodies, truly, for they 
were locked together — suddenly appear, streaking 
down headlong from out the heavens. There followed 
a single terrific splash far out over the tide, an up- 
heaval of waters, a succession of ripples hurrying out- 
wards, ever outwards, to tell the tale, and then — 
nothing. 

Next morning, as the sun rose, a party of mournfully 
shrieking black-backed, herring, common, and black- 
headed gulls were gathered around the soaked and be- 
draggled carcasses of a polecat and a buzzard, stranded 
by the falling tide upon a mud spur, and still locked 
savagely and implacably in death. 

Half a mile away, in the darkness of her burrow, the 
she-polecat stirred uneasily in her sleep, and, waking 
for a moment, stared out at the still, silent, secret 
marshes, wondering, perhaps, why her mate had not 
returned. 

And ten miles away, far up in their great nest among 
the boughs of a mighty Scotch fir, three downy, but 
already fierce-eyed, buzzard nestlings craned their necks 



192 THE HIGHWAYMAN 

upwards, calling hungrily, and wondering why their 
mother had not returned ; while their father shot and 
swerved backwards and forwards over the tree-tops, 
mewing and calling, uneasily and lonelily, to the clouds 
for his wife, who had so mysteriously disappeared. 
And so — fate and the end. 

This only remains to be said — the female polecat 
and the male buzzard did, in spite of Fate, manage to 
rear their young. And if the gamekeeper and the 
collector, the sportsman and the farmer, have not been 
too cruel, those young are alive to-day. 



XII 
THE FURTIVE FEUD 

There was a sun. You could not see it much be- 
cause of burning, dancing haze, but you could not get 
anywhere without feeling it. Almost everything you 
touched — sand, rock, and such like — blistered you; 
and the vegetation, where it wasn't four-inch thorns 
and six-inch spikes and bloated cacti, was shriveled 
yellow-brown, like the color of a lion. Perhaps it was 
a lion, some of it. How could one tell? 

Lizards, which were bad ; and scorpions, which were 
worse ; and snakes, which were worse than worse, lay 
about in the sun, as if they were pieces of leather dry- 
ing. You could not see them — which was awkward, 
for some of them held a five-minute death up their 
sleeve — partly because they matched their surround- 
ings, partly because they were still. They were colored 
burnt to hide in a burnt land. 

Yet it was possible to be bright and gay and un- 
obtrusive in this place, too — if you were cold-blooded 
enough not to boil dry and explode before getting a 
drink — for under some trees lay, in the old-gold, 
yellow, black-shade-streaked, tawny-red grass, a sleek 
and glistening, banded, blotched, and spotted, newly 
painted python. Yes, sirs, a python snake; and you 
couldn't see it in its new levee uniform — the old one 
lay not fifty yards away — any more than you could 

193 



194 TH E FURTIVE FEUD 

see the other, and plainly attired, bad dreams — so 
long as it did not move. Its length was not apparent, 
because it was coiled up ; but it would have uncoiled 
out into something most alarming if stretched, I fancy. 

The jackal made no sound as he came, tripping 
daintily, graceful and light as a rubber ball, into the 
scene, blissfully oblivious, apparently, of the fact that 
any other next step might awake a volcano under his 
feet. 

He was a black-backed jackal; red-tawny sides, 
fading to nearly white under-parts ; black back, grizzled 
with white hairs, neatly ruled off from the rest of him, 
like a big saddle ; large, wide-awake ears ; long, thin 
legs ; bushy tail ; very knowing eyes, and all complete — 
part wolf, part fox, and yet neither and something of 
both. No one living could, perhaps, have been agile 
enough to measure him, but he looked over two and a 
half feet from nose-tip to tail-root ; and you can add, 
possibly, a third of that for the tail. But he was all 
there, whatever his length, every short hair of him, 
and none of the swarms of buzzing flies around seemed 
anxious to settle upon him. 

He picked his way across to the shade of the trees, 
slouching quite casually, apparently ; though how he 
avoided treading upon any of the sudden deaths vari- 
ously thrown about seems a mystery. And just short 
of the shade of the trees he stopped. He had spotted, 
or scented — the latter is most likely, for the smell 
beat a chemical-works, a slaughter-house, and a whale- 
ship rolled into one — the big snake. 

The big snake remained motionless, and made no 
sign. Goodness knows whether it was asleep, if snakes 
ever do sleep. It certainly had its horrible eyes open, 



THE FURTIVE FEUD 195 

fixed in an evil stare at anything, or nothing, after the 
fashion of snakes, who are cursed in that they cannot 
shut their eyes to things. (Imagine the position of 
some people in this world if they were afflicted like the 
snakes !) 

For about a minute that jackal stood like a carved 
beast in wood, with the original bark left on his back. 
Then he began to sink, slowly, gradually, till he lay as 
flat as a punctured bladder. And the picture of that 
little black-backed fellow — that Cants mesomelas, if 
you like official terms — all alone there, and surrounded 
by a dozen deaths at least, and all nasty, doing the 
stalking act upon that python was great. He stalked. 
My ! how he stalked ! And with reason, for he was 
taking on, perhaps, the biggest thing in the hunting 
line that he had ever tackled, and it was a million to 
one that, if he did not win, he died, and horribly, too ; 
and he knew it. Ordinarily he would have been the 
python's prey. 

There was a little snicker, as it were, in the air as his 
fangs closed, and the python, waking one-twentieth of 
a second too late, lifted its head. Then, short and 
crisp — snap ! 

Talk about tweaking a lightning-flash by its tail ! 
It would have been a wake to what followed then. 

The jackal knew what to expect — by instinct, I 
suppose. Anyway, he did not wait longer than it takes 
to scrunch as hard as possible with canine teeth as sharp 
as knives, and leap clear. 

He did it, however, and stood well back, with his ears 
cocked and his head on one side. It was as if he were 
panting, " Now, let her rip " — and she did. 

A hurricane in a cage, a volcano in an eligible house- 



196 THE FURTIVE FEUD 

lot, a geyser in a water-jug — what you will; but the}' 
were all tame alongside that p}'thon, after the little 
black-back had got his fangs home. 

You know the size of pythons? 'Bout the biggest 
things in snakes there are going, bar two ; and this one 
was not a baby. But nobody can properly measure 
their strength. This one unwrapped itself in one awful 
swiftness, and wrapped itself up again more awfully 
swiftly and in worse knots. Then things became hazy, 
and one could only tell by the dust, and the sand, and 
the grass, and the leaves, and the other things ftying 
around that something was happening. 

But the jackal did not seem to care. He only sat 
well back, with jaws open and very red tongue lolling, 
obviously doing a dog-laugh to himself. Perhaps it 
touched his sense of humor to think that so small a 
beast as he, with just one scientific bite, should create 
such a deal of disturbance. But the — er — aroma 
could not have amused even him, and he was, as you 
might say, salted to stenches ; for, though he w r as on 
the up-wind side, even there it was enough to knock flat 
an}'thing that the python's tail could not reach. It 
was a most stupendous stench — a sort of weapon of 
defense, or danger-signal, that these big snakes have. 

Now, perhaps it was the reek that drew the purr. 
Purring is generally looked upon as a nice and comfy 
sort of a sound, but this was not. 

The jackal just heard it intruding upon the confusion 
of the python's last contortions, as if suddenly, and it 
seemed to come from the ground, and the sky, and the 
surrounding scenery all at the same time. There was 
nothing nice and comfy about it at all. The jackal 
removed himself, at sound of it, about four yards in as 



THE FURTIVE FEUD 197 

many bounds, and every grizzled scrap of fur along his 
black back stood on end. If we had heard it, we should 
have reached for our rifle, and felt tingly all down our 
spine, for that was the sort of purr it was — a horrible, 
hungry, suggestive, cruel, and blood-curdling sound of 
ghoulish pleasure. 

The jackal ceased to dog-laugh, and his tail was 
between his legs, for he knew that purr, and its name 
was death. Death angry is bad enough, but death 
pleased — 

Louder and louder the purr became, till it seemed, as 
the python began to lash out the very last of its life, 
apparently, to fill the whole place. Finally, it became 
real, and — a shape walked slowly out of a thorn-bush. 

It would be blatant exaggeration to call that shape a 
lion. It — he — had been one. He was now a walking 
hat-rack. Never have you seen such a lion. Never had 
the jackal seen such a lion, even; and he had done 
business — of the snatch-and-run order — with lions all 
his life. 

However many years that lion had lived, to kill 
mercilessly, Heaven alone knows ; but how on earth he 
had contrived to avoid for some time being equally 
mercilessly killed by hyenas, or wild hogs, Heaven and 
himself alone knew, too. He was a very, very old lion, 
a derelict of a lion, a shadow of a ghost of one, mangy, 
tottering, toothless — come down to eat snakes killed 
by others, even by jackals. 

Then the jackal went away, dejected and disgusted. 
He was honestly proud of his slaying of that python. 

It was the biggest screw-up of courage he had ever 
accomplished in his life, and to be done out of his re- 
warding big feast by that purring skeleton of a king of 



198 THE FURTIVE FEUD 

beasts ! It was too much even for his pessimistic 
philosophy. 

" Yaaa-ya-ya-ya-ya ! " he howled, with his nose 
pointed to the brazen sun, and melted away among the 
accursed thorn-scrub with a look about him that said, 
as plainly as words, " And that's what comes of hunting 
in daylight." 

The jackal, after a long skirmish and a drink, retired 
homewards towards sunset, when suddenly, from a tuft 
of grass ahead of him, a shadow shot and vanished. He 
picked up the trail at once, diagnosed it as that of a 
hare, and gave chase. 

It was a fine chase, characterized by every aspect of 
first-class trailing, and carried along at such a speed 
that the quarry never got a chance to stop and get its 
second wind. Indeed, the quarry never had a chance to 
stop at all, until it was stopped, and the manner of that 
happening was strange. 

Whether designedl}' driven, or whether by chance, one 
cannot tell, but the fact remains that the hare took a 
" line of country " which, if persisted in, would lead her 
clcse past the jackal's lair, or, rather, his wife's lair. 
This was important — for the jackal. 

Once, indeed, our hunter all but overran a small — 
but quite big enough — boa-constrictor, which must 
have aimed to drop from a tree upon the hare passing 
below, and missed. It was in an even more evil temper, 
in consequence, than snakes usually are, and struck at 
the jackal with its head and shut mouth. The jackal 
quietly side-stepped, snapped, missed, and made off after 
his quarry, and about five hundred yards farther on he 
oame up with " puss " — dead. 

The jackal sat on his bushy tail, stuck out his fore- 



THE FURTIVE FEUD 199 

feet straight, and stopped as quickly as ever he could. 
Then he snarled, and full right had he to snarl. 

The hare was lying on her back, weakly kicking out 
the last of her life with her hindlegs, and a stocky, 
short-nosed, evil, leering, side-striped jackal was stand- 
ing over her. He had done the deed. And our black- 
back knew that side-stripe, had met him before. The 
two families lived only a few hundred yards apart, and 
it was Mrs. Side-stripe who was responsible for our 
friend's wife's crippled condition at that moment. This 
was a typical side-striper, one of the creeping, hunting- 
by-surprise-and-pounce sort, and it may be that he 
had never run down any prey worth speaking about in 
his life. In a way, he was the very opposite from our 
black-back, who was mostly legs, and a bit of a sports- 
man, and, I believe, really delighted in a good ringing 
hunt. Wherefore there was not much cause for sur- 
prise at the bitter blood-feud that had gradually grown 
up between them, till now things had come pretty well 
to a head. 

The other beast folded back his lean upper-lip till his 
teeth glistened, and grinned at him — a menacing grin. 
I don't know if he guessed that it was, by all the laws 
of the chase, the black-back's hare, but he knew that he 
had pounced upon her as she passed — pounced like a 
cat, as was his way, what time he was profiting by his 
enemy's absence to keep that enemy's lame wife indoors, 
and from hunting even for insects or fruit, by prowling 
round her lair, and threatening her with growls. Per- 
haps he had designs upon her puppies. Perhaps his 
wife had. And perhaps Mrs. Mesomelas knew that. 
It is difficult to tell. 

There was a sort of a blackish-tawny line drawn to 



200 THE FURTIVE FEUD 

the side-stripe — whose other and learned name was 
Adustus — and back. It scarcely seemed possible that 
the black-backed little chap had moved, but he had — 
leaped in and out again, chopping wickedly with a 
sword-like gleam of fangs as he did so. The other 
pivoted, quick as thought, and counter-slashed, and, 
before 3 r ou could wink, Mesomelas was in and away, in 
and out, once, twice, and again. One bite sent a little 
flick of the other's brown fur a-flying; one missed, one 
got home, and the side-stripe's ugly snarling changed to 
a yap to say so. 

Twice the two beasts whirled round and round like 
roulette-balls, the black-back always on the outside, 
always doing the attacking, dancing as if on air, light 
as a gnat. Once he got right in, and the foe sprang at 
his throat. He was not there when the enemy's teeth 
closed, but his fangs were, and fang closed on fang, and 
the resulting tussle was not pretty to behold. 

Mesomelas cleared himself from that scrunch with 
very red lips, but never stopped his whirling, light- 
cavalry form of attack. He was trying to tease the 
other into dashing after him, and giving up the advan- 
tage which his foe had in size and strength, but it was 
no good ; and finally Adustus suddenly scurried into 
cover, redder than he had been, and our black-back, 
too, had to bolt for his hole, as an aardwolf, clumsy, 
hyena-like, and cowardly, but strong enough for them, 
scenting blood, came up to investigate. 

Mercifully, the side-stripe seemed to attract the more 
attention, or shed the more blood, and while the aard- 
wolf was sniffing at his hole — not intending to do any- 
thing if the jackal had a snap left in him, which he had, 



THE FURTIVE FEUD 201 

for the aardwolf possessed the heart of a sheep, really 
— the Wack-back managed to dash out and abscond to 
his hole with the hare. When the aardwolf came back, 
and sniffed out what he had done, he said things. 

Our jackal's head appeared at his hole next dawn as 
a francolin began to call, and a gray lowric — a mere 
shadow up among the branches — started to call out, 
" Go awa}' ! go away ! " as if he were speaking to the 
retreating night. A gay, orange-colored bat came and 
hung up above the jackal's den — well out of reach, of 
course — and a ground-hornbill suddenly started his 
reverberating " Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo ! " and, behold — 
'twas dawn ! 

The jackal scuttled down to the river to have a drink, 
which he got rather riskily among the horns of drinking, 
congregated hartebeests, impala, and other antelope, 
and returned with the leg-bone of a bush-buck, which 
had been slain the night before by a leopard, and he 
went to ground very quickly, for the great spotted cat 
could be heard, grunting wrath, at his heels. 

Then the day strode up, and the light, creeping in, 
showed our jackal, curled up and fast asleep, in his lair, 
as far away as he could possibly get in the space — two 
ant-bears', or aardvarks', holes run into one — from his 
also curled-up wife. 

Later — for it was quite chilly — he came out to 
sleep in the sun, under a bush, till the sun, in turn, half- 
baked him, and he retired again to the den. 

The days were, as a rule, for the jackal, a succession 
of sleeping blanks, but at the end of this day it was the 
fate of a small python — small for a python — to hunt 
a pangolin — who was as like a thin pineapple with a 



202 THE FURTIVE FEUD 

long tail, if you understand me, as it was like anything, 
or like a fir-cone many times enlarged, only it was an 
animal, and a weird one — into that den of thieves. 

Mrs. Mesomelas, she appeared to shoot straight from 
dreamless slumber on to the pangolin's back in some 
wonderful way ; and Mr. Mesomelas, he bounced from 
the arms of Morpheus into — the jaws of the snake? 
No, sirs; on to the nape of that snake's neck, if snakes 
may be said to have napes to their necks. But to get 
hold of the neck of a python is one thing, to keep there 
quite a different, and very risky, affair; and our jackal, 
who was no pup, knew that. If that legless creation of 
the devil could only have got his tail round something, 
our jackal might have been turned into food for his 
food, so to speak. Wherefore, possibly, he was fright- 
ened. It was like taking hold of a live wire by the loose 
end. Moreover, the space was confined, and there 
were the whelps and all, and I rather fancy black-back 
was more frightened to leave go and stay than he was 
to hold on and run. 

Anyway, he held on an ran. 

An old, fat zebra stallion, round-barreled and half- 
asleep, snorted suddenly, and stared with surprise at 
the sight of a black-backed jackal galloping as fast as 
circumstances would permit him, with the wide-mouthed 
head of a python in his jaws, and the remaining long, 
painted body trailing out behind. The snake was not 
going with any pleasure, and his wriggling tail was 
feeling for a hold every inch of the way, and if he 
could have got one — oh, jackal! But he could not, 
for the jackal kept on going, and the snake's after- 
length kept on trailing out straight, like a loose rope 
behind a boat, through the perishing glare and the heat- 



THE FURTIVE FEUD 203 

flurry that seemed to be making the whole world jump 
up and down, as it does when you look at it over the 
top of a locomotive-funnel. 

Snakes take a long time to die, or to seem dead, even 
with a double set of glistening sharp teeth scrunching 
as hard as their owner knows how into their neck. At 
last, however, after a final series of efforts to get, and 
keep, in the shape of a letter S, the python's tail 
gradually ceased to feel for a hold, and the writhing 
strain in the jackal's jaws relaxed. Still, our Meso- 
melas was taking no chances, and he galloped home with 
his capture before he stopped, as proud and happy an 
old dog, rascally jackal as ever cracked a bone on a 
fine day. 

He was a little puffed, and more than a little puffed 
up, and it may have been that he did not keep his eyes all 
round his head, as a jackal should always do. Any- 
way, there, in the gathering shadows of night, came a 
waiting, watching shadow, that was presently joined by 
another, and the two — their eyes glinted once in a 
nasty metallic fashion — stood head to head, watching 
him. 

By the time Mrs. Mesomelas had hobbled out to view 
the " kill " for herself, and snarl her appreciation — 
truly, it was a strange way of showing it — with thin, 
wicked ears laid back, and more than wicked fangs 
bared, the waiting, watching shadows had crept for- 
ward a little, on their bellies, head up, and — Mrs. 
Mesomelas, with the quick suspicion of motherhood 
awake in her, saw them. 

The snarl that she whipped out fetched the jackal 
round upon himself as if stung. Then he saw, and 
understood, and rage flamed into his intelligent, dog's 



2o + THE FURTIVE FEUD 

eyes. It was the side-striped jackals, Mr. and Mrs., 
plotting to loot his " kill." 

It was the black-back who attacked. Perhaps he 
knew that one secret of defense is swift and unexpected 
offense. Anyway, he attacked, sailing in with his 
dancy, chopping, in-and-out skirmishing methods ; and 
Mrs. Mesomelas, on three legs and with the bill for the 
other to be settled, helped him. 

It was very difficult, in the tropic dust, to follow what 
exactly happened next. For the next few minutes 
black-back was here, there, and everywhere, leaping and 
dodging in and out like a lambent flame. The human 
eye could scarcely follow him, but the human ear could 
hear plainW the nasty, dog-like snarling and the snap 
of teeth. 

The side-stripe, as I have said, was the weightier 
beast, but the black-back never gave him the advantage, 
which he sought, of the close-fought fight. 

More than once he was chased, but only to lead his 
foe into the open, where he could play his own game to 
his own liking ; and at last, when the moon rose, and 
his mate had the female black-back driven back to her 
last ditch, so to speak, at the entrance to her lair, the 
side-stripped jackal, spouting blood at every joint, it 
seemed, collapsed suddenly, and apparently gave up the 
ghost. 

Now, our black-backed jackal was not a young beast, 
and he was up to most wild-folks' games — which was 
as well. He approached the corpse with caution, and 
as he poised for the last spring the corpse was at his 
throat. Black-back, however, was not there, but his 
tail was, and the side-striped one got a mouthful of the 
bushy black tip of that. Whereupon Mesomelas re- 



THE FURTIVE FEUD 205 

coiled on himself, and for a moment a horrible " worry " 
followed, at the end of which the other dropped limply 
again, this time, apparently, really done for. 

Ver\', very gingerly the black-back — himself a red 
and weird sight in the eye of the moon — approached, 
and seized and shook the foe, dropped him, and — again 
that foe was a leaping streak at his throat. 

Mesomelas side-stepped, and neatly chopped — a 
terrible, wrenching bite — at his hindleg in passing. It 
fetched him over, and he lay still, the moon shining on 
his side, doubly and redly striped now. 

This time it was Mesomelas who sprang at his throat 
— to be met by fangs. But in the quarter of an in- 
stant, changing his mind after he sprang, he shot clean 
up in the air, and came dowm to one side, and, re- 
bounding like a ball, had the other by the neck. 

For one instant he kept there, hung, wrenching 
ghastlity, then sprang clear, and, backing slowly, limp- 
ing, growling horribly, flat-eared and beaten, the side- 
striped jackal began his slow, backward retreat into the 
heart of the nearly impenetrable thorns, where the win- 
ner was not such a fool as to follow him. And the black- 
backed jackal never saw him again. Living or dead, 
he faded out of our jackal's life forever. 

And when he turned, his wife was standing at the 
entrance to the " earth " alone. The other, the female 
side-striped jackal's form, could be dimly seen dissolving 
into the night — on three legs. 

" Yaaa-ya-ya-ya ! " howled Mesomelas. 



XIII 
THE STORM PIRATE 

The sea-birds were very happy along that terrible 
breaker-hewn coast. Puffin, guillemot, black guillemot, 
razorbill, cormorant, shag, fulmar petrel, storm petrel 
perhaps, kittiwake-gull, common gull, eider-duck, 
oyster-catcher, after their kind, had the great, cliff- 
piled, inlet-studded, rock-dotted stretch of coast prac- 
tically to themselves — to themselves in their thousands. 
Their only shadow was the herring-gulls, and the 
herring-gulls, being amateur, not professional, pirates, 
were too clumsy to worry too much. 

Then came the rain-shower. Not that there was 
anything in that. Rain-showers came to that land as 
easily as blushes used to do to maidens' cheeks — rain- 
showers, and sudden squalls, and all manner of swift 
storm phenomena. But behind the rain-shower, or in 
it, maybe — it blotted out cliff and inlet and sandbar 
and heather-covered hills, and, with the wind, whipped 
the sea into spume like an egg-whisk — came he, the 
storm pirate. 

A guillemot — you know the guillemot, the fish- 
hunter, who flies under the waters more easily than she 
flies the air above the waters — had risen, and was 
making inshore with a full catch, when the squall caught 
her without warning. For a little she faced it, her 
wings whirring madly, her body suspended in mid-air, 

206 



THE STORM PIRATE 207 

but she not making headway one inch against the sud- 
den fury of a forty-mile-an-hour wind. Then, since 
she could no longer see the shore, which was blotted out 
with hissing rain, she turned and ran down-wind, like a 
drawn streak, to the lee of a big stack of rock. 

The next that was seen of her, she was heading out 
to sea at top speed, in wake of the rain-shower and the 
squall, which had passed as suddenly as it had come ; 
and behind her, pursuing her with a relentless fury that 
made one gasp, shot another and a strange bird-shape. 
Its lines were the lines of the true pirate ; its wings long 
and sharp-cut ; its beak wickedly hooked at the tip ; its 
claws curved, for no gentle purpose, at the end of its 
webbed feet ; its eye fierce and haughty ; its uniform the 
color of the very stormcloud that had just passed — 
dun and smoked cream below, and sooty above. True, 
he was not big, being only twenty-one inches — two 
inches less than the herring-gull. But what is size, 
anyway? It was the fire that counted, the ferocity, 
the " devil," the armament, and the appalling speed. 
Just as a professional boxer of any size can lay out any 
mere hulking hooligan, so this bird carried about him 
the stamp of the professional fighter that could lay 
out anything there in that scene that he chose — 
almost. 

The guillemot flew as never in all her life had she 
flown before, and every known artifice of dodging she 
had heard of she tried, and — it all failed. The terrible 
new bird gained all the time steadily, following her as if 
towed by an invisible string, till at last he was above 
her, his wonderful wild scream was ringing in her ears, 
his cruel eyes glaring into hers, his beak snapping in 
her very face, his claws a-clutch. 



208 THE STORM PIRATE 

No, thank you. In sheer terror she opened her beak 
and dropped her fish. It fell like a column of silver, 
and in a flash her pursuer was gone — nay, was not 
gone; had turned, rather, into a second column, a sooty 
one, falling like a thunderbolt, till he overtook even the 
falling fish, and wonderfully snatched it up in his 
hooked bill ere ever it could touch the waves, without a 
word or explanation of any kind whatever. 

That, apparent^, was his manner of getting his 
living ; a strange manner, a peculiar way — the way of 
the pirate on the ocean. 

Despoiled, but safe, the guillemot rattled away " for 
another cast " ; but the foe settled, riding lightly on the 
lift and fall of the bottle-green waves. 

Here he was no longer a wonderful phantom spirit of 
the storm, but just a bird that might have been passed 
over at first glance as simply a seagull. But not at a 
second glance. 

Men called this strange bird Richardson's skua, or 
Arctic skua, or lesser skua, or, officially, Stcrcorarius 
crepidatus, or, most unofficially, in the vernacular, 
" boatswain," or " man-o'-war," or " gull-tormentor." 
Apparently you could take your choice what you called 
him. But he did not belong to Mr. Richardson really. 
He belonged to nobody, only to himself, to the wind and 
the rain, that seemed to have begot him, and to the 
grim north, from which he took his other name. He 
might have claimed the gulls as his near relations — 
they loathed him enough. 

For a long time he sat on the lifting, breathing swell, 
floating idlv. There was nothing else on the face of 
the lonely waters except himself and a flock, or fleet, I 
should say, of razorbills and guillemots, very far away, 



THE STORM PIRATE 209 

who alternately showed all white breasts, and vanished 
— as they dived and rose all together — like white- 
faced, disappearing targets, and one gull, who wheeled 
and wheeled in the middle distance, with one eye on the 
divers and one on the skua, as if, gull-like, waiting on a 
chance from either. 

Then at last the skua rose again, and swept hur- 
riedly out to sea to meet a small black-and-white speck 
that was coming in. It was a little, rotund, parrot- 
beaked puffin, loaded with fish — sprats — four of them 
set crossways in his wonderful bill. He seemed to know 
nothing about the skua till that worthy was upon him, 
and then, as he fled, after a furious chase of about three 
minutes, he suddenly surrendered by letting fall all his 
spoil. 

The skua caught up one sprat before it hit the sur- 
face, but, being too late to overtake the rest, seemed to 
take no further notice of them, but swept on, to settle 
upon the water a mile away and preen himself. And 
this was where the waiting, watching gull came in — 
the herring-gull. He sprang to strenuous life, and, 
arriving swiftly at full speed over the spot, snatched 
up off the surface, and by clumsily attempting to 
plunge, two more of the sprats, before the skua could 
intervene. 

Then it was that a terrible and a totally unexpected 
thing happened, and yet, if one comes to think about it 
and study the matter more, the most natural in the 
world ; probably, also, on those wild seas, even common- 
place. Only, you see, there was no interval at all be- 
tween the skua sitting placidly on the lap of the waves, 
eyeing the gull vengefully, and that same skua shooting 
straight upwards, all doubled up, on the top of what 



210 THE STORM PIRATE 

appeared to have been a submarine mine in a mild form 
in active demonstration. 

This submarine mine, however, in addition to the 
burst and heave of torn and upflung falling waters and 
foam, had a visible heart, a great, shining, wet, torpedo- 
shaped body, which rose on end beneath the stricken 
bird, and fell again with a splintering crash that shot 
up the heads of the diving birds half a mile away. It 
might have been a thresher-shark, or some other 
northern shark, or it might have been a dolphin, which 
is bad, or a killer whale, which is a good deal worse, if it 
had not been a great gray seal seeking dinner ; and its 
effect on the luckless skua was the effect of a battering 
ram, and the skua that fell back again with the fall of 
snarling water was to all intents and purposes a corpse. 

But it was a good thing that he was so. Had it been 
otherwise, had he tried to get away or fluttered, there 
would have been no more of him. That is to say, the 
head of the seal came up — or its wet and suggestive 
big nose did — and poked about, trying to find the 
bird. It had evidently meant to grab him, to engulf 
him utterly and forever in the first rush; but something 
— some unlooked-for lift of a wave or turn of the 
bird — had made the shot miss, or nearly miss, so that 
the bird had been hit by the bloated six-footer's nose, 
instead of being crushed in its teeth — its terrible long 
and glistening array of murderous teeth. 

All the same, the nose blow was bad enough. It was 
like being hit by the beak of a torpedo at full speed, fit 
almost to bash a boat in. 

The seal was quite evidently looking for the bird, 
and, equally quite evidently, seemed bound to find him. 
To know whv it did not at once see him is to know that 



THE STORM PIRATE 211 

the seal's view, from below the surface, of the world 
above is about a twelve-foot circle of white-gold light, 
that is all ; and the skua, floating limp and floppy, had 
been, by chance, till then always carried hither and yon 
by the waves just outside that circle. But that chance 
could not last. 

Then came the other seal. Came she easily and 
gracefully, as a seal should in her element, effortlessly 
gliding along, her head from time to time up like a 
dog's — some gentle dog's, say a mild-eyed spaniel's — 
looking about. She was just a female seal. She knew 
nothing of the bird or her companion, who were at sea- 
level, and more often than not hidden in the trough, till 
she came sliding down the slope of a round-barreled 
swell, practically on top of them. Then it was too late 
to avoid mutual recognition. 

Quick as sound she had seen, had realized, had spun 
on her apology for a tail, and had gone, leaving a little 
trail of foam behind her to prove her speed and her 
coyness. But, quick as light, the magnificent male seal 
had sunk from sight, leaving a little chain of bursting 
bubbles behind to mark his speed. And the last that 
was seen of that lady seal was a speck far on the 
horizon, going like a masterless torpedo, alternately 
leaping forward through the air and shooting along 
on, or just under, the surface — switchbacking, they 
call it ; and that, I dare to fancy, if it proves anything, 
proves that the coyness was only make-believe, and that 
she had allowed the daring admirer to catch her up and 
force her to act as if she were already vanquished and 
using the last arts of swift swimming she knew. 

It left the skua, however ; left him still floating, float- 
ing, floating up one long breaker's side, and sliding 



212 THE STORM PIRATE 

down its other side to its fellow behind, towards the 
shore — always towards the shore. It is true that the 
tide was falling offshore, but that made no difference to 
the currents of those parts, which were independent cur- 
rents and of a great force. They were shouldering the 
skua steadily to land, and if you had dropped a line 
overboard there, with an ordinary lead on, you would 
have felt them pulling at it, and taking the lead along 
like a live thing. And the currents were Fate, so far 
as that bird was concerned. 

There was a little inlet, and a little bay in the inlet 
no larger than a good-sized dining-table, and seaweed, 
green and red, upon the rock-bowlders that encircled it, 
and old-gold patches of sand between the rock-bowlders, 
and green grass behind the rock-bowlders, and brown- 
plush furze behind the green grass, and a patch of blue 
sky over all. And in the middle of the little bay in the 
inlet, bob-bobbing on the lap-lapping of the littlest 
waves, that — sifted out by then, as it were — had 
found their way so far, floated the skua, the Richard- 
son's or Arctic skua, dead, to all appearances, as the 
proverbial door-nail. But that was not the rub. The 
rub was in the — ah ! 

" He-oh ! " pealed down the clear, ringing bugle-cry 
from above, and a shadow floated upon the reflections 
a-dance on the surface in the little bay in the little inlet 
— floated and hung, so that it exactly covered the skua 
like a funeral pall ; floated, and hung, and came down. 
As its claws scraped a bowlder, and it furled its long, 
narrow vans, it was revealed as the big herring-gull — 
him we left out upon the face of the waters, watching 
and waiting on chance. 

His spotless expanse of head and neck alone marked 



THE STORM PIRATE 213 

him, gave him away, a speck you could see for a mile. 
His size — just on two feet — proved what his snowy 
hood proclaimed, in case there were any doubts. A 
smaller gull, an uncommon common gull — of eighteen 
inches — came and looked, to make quite sure — and 
went away again. The herring-gull, in spite of his silly 
name, has a reputation, and a " plug ugly " one. 

And the herring-gull, he — did nothing. That is the 
strength of the herring-gull — doing nothing. He can 
do it for an hour, half a morning, or most of a day. 
His battle-cry might well have been, " Wait and see," 
but he must be one of the few living, breathing things 
on this earth who have made the game pay, and — 
lived. He might have been a lump of chalk, or a marble 
carving, or a stuffed specimen, or asleep, or dead, for 
all the signs of living that he gave. One began to 
wonder if he ever would move again. He had been a 
bird, but was now the life-size model of one cut in 
alabaster, with clear pebbles for eyes — they were quite 
as hard and cold as that, his eyes. 

And all the time the body of the skua floated, and 
danced, and drifted, and lifted in, making an inch on 
one wavelet, to lose three-quarters of it on the next, but 
still, unnoticeably perhaps, but undoubtedly, gradually, 
surely, for all that, drifting in. 

Somebody has written somewhere that gulls never 
touch a carcass on land. Sometimes they touch things 
on land which were not carcasses before they touched 
them. This gull, however, did not wait for any land- 
ing. Perhaps he knew that, once stranded, the gray 
crows might come to assist him in their own peculiar 
way, or a raven, who would not assist him at all, except 
into the next world, if he did not relinquish all claim 



214 THE STORM PIRATE 

to the feast. Anyway, whatever we poor mortals may 
kid ourselves into thinking he did or did not know, or 
what we may think he ought to have known, he began 
operations as soon as the skua came alongside, so to 
speak — that is, drifted against the particular bowlder 
upon which the sphinx-like herring-gull happened by 
chance — always by chance, of course — to be standing. 

Now, there is no particular joy in having your eyes 
hammered at by a blunted sharp instrument, like a 
herring-gull's beak, for instance, even if those eyes 
happen to be shut, as I think the skua's were, and the 
instrument wielded with the extreme clumsiness of the 
half-trained, as I know the herring-gull's beak was. 
But, all the same, it was the kindest thing that could 
have happened, for, had it not been for that, the skua 
was like to have drifted in that fashion from that little 
inlet out upon- another sea ; not the one connected with 
the inlet, but one where you can drift forever, and whose 
name is Death. The physical pain, however, brought 
him round. He was only stunned, and the agony of 
the eyes, or eye, rather, was acute. 

He opened the other eye — a wonderful, piercing, 
fierce orb. He contracted his feathers. The world 
grew from a mist in that eye to a little bay in a little 
inlet, with the seaweed-covered bowlder-rocks, the old- 
gold sand, the green grass, the brown-plush furze, and 
the patch of wonderful blue sky over-top. Then it took 
in the spotless, gaunt form of the herring-gull, and — 
he remembered that he was a skua, only some twenty- 
one inches long, 'tis true, but still a skua, to be treated 
and respected as such. 

Wherefore, who so surprised as that big father of 
herring-gulls when the bedraggled, smoky-hued thing 



THE STORM PIRATE 215 

under his bill, which he may, or may not, have taken for 
a corpse, woke up, returned to life suddenly, and 
erupted into his very face, with the yells of a fiend, the 
weapons of a fury, and the rage of several devils? He 
yelled, too, that herring-gull, not entirely with rage, 
and did his best to get under way as quickly as might 
be, but became, before he knew where he was, altogether 
too busy even for that. 

Not being in the habit of performing optical opera- 
tions upon Arctic skuas as a rule, he had nothing in his 
memory to warn him of what followed, nothing to put 
him up to the absolutely diabolical fury of the onslaught 
he had to meet in the next few seconds. He certainly 
did his level best with such weapons as Nature had given 
him, but his blunt, hooked beak and the claws he had 
not got seemed suddenly meager against the hammer- 
ing, tearing, stabbing, rending dagger weapons of his 
— " meal." 

The skua saw red, and the herring-gull saw mainly 
red skua, as he was hurled back and down under the first 
rush, and instantly, without a second to recover, was 
hurled, equally helplessly, the other way, shrieking for 
his very life, and decorating the air and the old-gold 
sand with a pretty little cloud of his spotless feathers. 

He fought with the desperation of almost all the 
wild-people, when there is no help for it ; hammering, 
too, but wildly and clumsily. The skua fought with 
the cunning and precision of the professional, plus such 
a rage as can only be described as berserk. 

It was not a long fight. Perhaps the skua felt that, 
after his collision at sea, his bolt would be soon shot, 
and he had better do what he was going to do as quickly 
and thoroughly as possible. Certainly he did appear 



216 THE STORM PIRATE 

to do so ; and when at length he drew back, rocking and 
gasping like a drunken creature, the famed purity of 
that herring-gull's uniform was a thing of beauty no 
longer. That part of him, indeed, which was not red 
was mud, or sand, or green slime, and in his eyes was 
the most worried and tired look you ever saw. 

He rocked, too, in his gait, as he ran and blundered, 
and he gasped with his beak open. When he rose, which 
lie did without any sort of procrastination, he rocked 
worse than ever, and twice nearly fell, and once hit the 
water, before finally slowly dragging himself away up- 
ward, flapping low and heavily across the little waves. 

With the one available e} T e — the eye left him in 
working condition by the herring-gull's clumsy efforts 
— flaming like a live-coal, that implacable skua watched 
him go. He may or may not have known it, of course, 
but I feel pretty certain that he would a few thousand 
times rather have been standing there upon the old-gold 
sand, with only one eye doing duty and an unspeakable 
agony in the other eye, than be that herring-gull in the 
condition he was then, going back to the bosom of his 
tribe. It is not a thing to dwell upon in polite society, 
but I tell you that the gull-folk do not always treat their 
wounded well, and there would be no chance, no earthly 
chance at all, of his finding a place in all that vast 
horizon of sea and sky and island where they, the cease- 
less, never-resting " White Patrol." would not eventu- 
ally find him. 

Then the skua lay down, and thereafter surrendered 
himself to that utter reaction which birds, who live 
more intensely in action than almost any other crea- 
tures, have brought to an apparently exaggerated pitch. 



THE STORM PIRATE 217 

He did not sleep, but he did not move, and every muscle 
in him, every fiber, every nerve, faculty, organ, was 
surrendered utterly to rest. 

Night came fluttering her sable wings across the 
scene, breathing and sighing audibly in the first silence 
that wild landscape of storms and squalls had known 
throughout the day, and the skua moved. His neck 
went up straight, and his head turned, looking sharply 
this way and that, fierce apprehension written upon 
him. 

There was nothing one could see to give cause for 
this. A flock of curlew were passing, wailing one to 
the other, across the sunset ; a string of late gulls trailed 
athwart the sky; and a wedge of those beautiful little 
wild-duck known as wigeon was letting itself down to 
the shores of the inlet. Far out to sea a black line, 
which might have been a sea-serpent if it hadn't been 
scoter ducks, trailed undulating over the waves, and a 
single great white gannet plunged from aloft into the 
deep at intervals with a report like a sunset gun. But 
they were all innocent, except in the opinion of the 
fish and shell-fish, and no manner of folk to trouble the 
pirate skua. Set a thief to catch a thief, however. 
And, besides, there was blood on the bird and around 
him, or the taint of it, and blood is the devil and all in 
the wild. There was nothing to be seen. No. That 
was the worst part of it. It was what was unseen that 
the skua was thinking about. 

Wherefore, then, our friend of the pirate rig rose 
and walked stiffly to the summit of one of the bowlder- 
rocks right at the water's edge. He was by no means 
recovered yet, or in any condition for a fight in that 



218 THE STORM PIRATE 

desolate scene, and had to select the most strategic 
position he could crawl to. He did, and awaited Fate's 
reply. 

The day died, and the moon came out to wink and 
dodge and play a foolish game of hide-and-seek in and 
out among the clouds. She showed the skua, a black 
knob atop of the black blob of his bowlder, apparently 
fast asleep, invisible if we did not know he was there. 
She showed black dots bobbing upon silver lanes, which 
were sea-duck of various kinds — scaup, long tail, 
scoter, and the rest. She showed a line of old, rotten 
posts, broken off short by the waves, along a sand- 
ridge, which were wild-geese ; and she showed three big, 
white swans — wild-swans, wilder even than the geese — 
floating like ghosts in the enchanted light. 

But she also showed other things, indistinctly, 'tis 
true ; but enough — quite enough. She revealed for an 
instant, as she shone on the spot on the sand where the 
skua had sat, the fact that the sand seemed to be alive, 
horribly alive, as if the pebbles had taken legs and ran 
about. It was a sudden, ghastly flashlight, hidden as 
soon as seen, and it gave one the shudders. Those 
pebbles were crabs mad with hunger, as crabs always 
seem to be. 

They had arrived there as if by magic — been creep- 
ing in ever since dusk, probably (one of the things that 
were unseen) ; but whether blood, or feathers, or taint 
of blood, or what horrible, ghoulish system of espionage 
drew them, is not for me to say. The} 7 were there, 
anyway, and — and — well, and then they were not 
there. The next flashlight of the moon showed that 
some others had taken their place. This was ghastly, 
for the others were bigger than any shore crabs, and 



THE STORM PIRATE 219 

they hopped, and they sat up hunched, like hobgoblins, 
and — they scratched ! This last identified them, for 
the soulless, shelled crab-people are not given to scratch 
much — at least, not in that way. They were rats — 
shore rats. The last designation is necessary, for there 
are rats and rats, all bad, but the shore rat is the 
worst. How many sleeping birds, wounded, tired, or 
unalert, die at his hands, or, rather, his teeth, in the 
course of a year would amaze anybody if known, and 
the shell-fish he relieves of life are legion. 

The hard, horny carapace of a retreating crab 
scraped, in the dead silence, against the rock-bowlder 
on which the skua sat. He made no move at the sound, 
the suggestive sound ; but his feathers were shut down 
quite tight, and he looked far smaller than usual. 
When birds shut down their feathers in that fashion 
they put on an armor coat, as it were, through which 
very little can pierce. It showed that he was ready. 

And you think that the mere shore crabs could be 
nothing to him. But a few hundred ravening shore 
crabs, with their lives for sale — all digging pieces out 
of you in the dark — are not so easy a proposition to 
dispose of as people may think. Try it. 

One of the rats turned suddenly and faced towards 
him. The skua could see its little, cruel eyes gleaming 
like gimlet-holes in the wall of a lighted room. Then 
another, and another, and another did the same. 

The skua was scarcely bleeding at all now, but he had 
left enough of a trail for them — they who make a 
specialty of the job. And they followed it. Hopping 
grotesquely across the mottled, hurrying patches of 
moonlight they came, one behind the other, and without 
noise. 



220 THE STORM PIRATE 

The skua remained as still as the bowlder he sat upon. 
In that position, even peering closely, you would never 
have seen him, unless, like ourselves, you knew he was 
there. But he was drawn together, draw r n in all his 
muscles like a tense spring, and — though this his perse- 
cutors could not know — he was recovering from his 
hurts rapidly, with the wonderful power of recuperation 
of all the wild-folk, who pay their price for it in clean, 
hard living. 

Then suddenly there was a scuffle below him in the 
dark. One of the rats squeaked a little, acknowledging 
receipt of a crab's pincers closed upon him, or her. 
Followed the sounds of some scuttering, confusion, and 
the horrible slide and scrape of horny shells upon stone. 
Then silence, and the skua knew that, in that wonderful 
way they have, the crabs, at any rate, were gone — for 
the moment. 

Remained, however, the rats, and one peered up over 
the bowlder the next instant, its eyes glinting in a 
momentary splash of moonlight fiendishly. Also, his 
quick ears could hear the soft creepings of the others on 
every side of the bowlder, back and front. They had 
surrounded him, and, like wolves, would now rush, and 
then — and then — They had gone. 

Yes, there could be no shadow of doubt about it. 
There had come an instant's furtive, hurried movement, 
a glimpse — no, half a glimpse — of hunched forms 
hopping through the dark, and they were no more. 

The skua stared, and as he stared a great terror 
seized him. What more deadly form of death than 
themselves had they suddenly become aware of, to cause 
them to invite themselves into nowhere in that magic 
fashion? 



THE STORM PIRATE 221 

In the dead silence that fell, he could hear nothing, 
see nothing. Yet he felt — indeed he knew — some- 
thing seemed to tell him, that a deadly foe was at hand. 

Hours passed. They were minutes really, but the}' 
seemed hours to him. Nothing happened ; nothing 
showed. But the rats did not come back. Therefore, 
whatever incarnation of death it was that removed them 
must be there still. He knew that. That lonely, 
wounded bird knew that. And he was right. 

Behind him, practically invisible, flat to the ground, 
a long, low, narrow, dark shape was lying crouched, 
creeping, creeping, creeping towards his tail. Slowly, 
almost painfully slowly, it drew upon him gradually, so 
gradually that the distance between them could scarce 
be seen to lessen. And soundlessly, so soundlessly that 
even his quick ears, trained far be} r ond the quickest 
human aural perception, could not hear it. 

Then, so quickly that the eye could not follow it, the 
crouching form made its rush. 

The skua was sitting motionless, with his head look- 
ing straight in front of him. The dark form came from 
behind, and there would have been no time for the skua 
to move before the thing, whatever it was, had him 
by the back of the neck, and dead, save for one little 
tiny fact. As it propelled itself forward, in the first 
bound, the claws of the beast's hindpaw's scraped upon 
a stone. It was only a little sound, and it gave the 
skua barely a fraction of a second's warning; but, he 
being a wild thing, it was enough. 

Quick as light the bird had half turned upon one side, 
and flung up one claw and wing to cover his neck, 
whilst his head jerked round hindpart before in the same 
atom of time. 



222 THE STORM PIRATE 

Thus it happened that the beast, unable to stop, 
found himself with his head and eyes being dug at by a 
hooked beak, and his jaws closed upon a skinny leg 
instead of upon the skua's spinal column, as he had 
intended, which would have put the skua out of life like 
turning out a gas-jet. 

And it was then, in that instant, that the moon chose 
to dodge from behind a cloud and reveal the beast as a 
big, long, lean, and hungry dog-stoat. Probably he 
had thought that the skua was a gull, and a wounded 
one. There is a difference, however, between the skuas 
and the gulls, though they bear a family likeness. He 
discovered the difference now, and for the next few 
minutes was not overjoyed at the knowledge. 

One cannot do much blood-sucking to weaken one's 
prey out of a scrawny leg that resembles a twig 
wrapped round with leather. And the stoat found this 
out, too, and he would have shifted his hold to the bird's 
body like a flash, if he had been given a chance, but he 
never was. 

Before he knew what was happening, he was blinded 
by the beating of vast wings, his claws began to slip and 
slide, and — oh, horror! — still slipping and sliding, 
he found the bowlder going from him. It went from 
him, receding downwards with terrifying rapidity, and 
the dancing, silvery, sparkling water was sliding below, 
too. 

Being a stoat, he hung on with V.C. doggedness and 
courage; but it was the worst thing he could have done. 
Moreover, as it was, he forced the bird to attempt re- 
prisals in mid-air — a terrible proceeding. 

Now, this was difficult, might almost seem impossible ; 
but the skua is one of the most wonderful flyers that 



THE STORM PIRATE 223 

haunt the seas even — and most of the best are there — 
and what he could not execute in the air was scarcely 
worth mentioning. It included in this case a perfectly 
diabolical scraping of the foe's head with his available 
claw, and after that, since the dogged stoat did not 
leave go, and the pain was excruciating, a wonderful 
bend forward, and, at. a pronounced and dangerous an- 
gle, a fiendish stabbing at the stoat's head with his 
murderous beak. This last involved a drop of nearly 
a hundred feet, but it did the trick. 

Blinded, dazed, shaken, and maddened by the agony 
of blows upon Ins sensitive nose, the stoat opened his 
jaws to grip higher up the leg; and in an instant he 
was gone, turning over and over, down, down, down to 
the hungry waves below. 

Ten minutes later the skua was calmly and safely 
asleep upon the top of a frowning black stack of rock, 
untroubled, I think, even by dreams of the terrible 
things he had gone through. 



Next morning, an apparition of wonder and fierce 
beauty, the skua, quite recovered except that he had a 
lameness in one leg and a weakness in one wonderful 
eye that would last him a lifetime, came racing down- 
shore out of a stormcloud into the full gold of the sun 
at some seventy miles an hour. He was in pursuit of 
a common gull who, with more luck than judgment, 
had caught a fish. 

The gull held on for a few minutes, on and in and 
around the horizon, going like the wind up and down 
and around, as for his life, with friend skua ever close to 



224 THE STORM PIRATE 

his tail, before a wild yell, which he could not mistake, 
sounded in his ear, and he dropped the prize. The skua 
executed his wonderful dive, and caught the gleaming 
silver thing before it reached the waves, and shooting up 
again, was just about to continue his course, when a 
constant and peculiar flickering above the beach caught 
his telescopic eye. 

He checked, flung up, came round beautifully effort- 
less, and headed towards the sight. Probably he knew 
what it was, had fathomed it even from that distance. 
It was a gang of gulls flying round and mobbing a hap- 
less wounded gull on the beach. 

It was a foul thing to do, a horrible, blundering, 
clumsy murder, done slowly ; but even so, it was all over 
before, with a scream that rang like the battle-cry of a 
Highland chief, and set the murderous heads up in wild 
alarm, the skua came shooting, twisting, turning, div- 
ing, and darting right into the heart of the crowd. 

And they went circling, and wheeling, and hurling 
down-wind like sheets of paper, those murderous sea- 
birds, dispersed and scattered over the face of the 
waters, and were gone almost without a word. 

Then the skua came lightly down, rocking on the 
wind, and settled beside the poor, draggled, white body, 
no longer white, upon the shingle, which had been so 
foully done to death by gulls of various clans. He 
may, or may not, have known it, but I can tell you that 
the gull was the self-same herring-gull who had tried to 
kill him the day before. Now he — but we will draw a 
curtain here. 

Next day the skua went away, and the fishing wild- 
folk breathed a sigh of relief as they watched him go, 



THE STORM PIRATE 225 

and for three days peace brooded over the winged fishers 
of those parts, so that birds could feed upon what they 
caught, nor be in fear of getting hunted for it. But 
upon the fourth day the skua came back. And he was 
not alone. A dusky, nearly brown — for they vary 
much in color — female skua came with him. And in 
due course they built them a home on the ground among 
the heather, and they guarded their treasured eggs and 
reared with amazing fierce devotion their beloved young. 
Before his advent that strip of wild sea-coast had 
been, mercifully, without its skuas. Our bold bucca- 
neer, however, having won his footing, took care to see 
that, so far as one bird could accomplish the great task, 
it never should be again. 



xrv 

WHEN NIGHTS WERE COLD 

And the Northern Lights come down 

To dance oil the houseless snow; 
And God, who clears the grounding berg, 

And steers the grinding flow, 
He hears the cry of the little kit-fox 

And the lemming on the snow. 

RlJDYABO KlPLINXJ. 

A snipe rose suddenly, and began to call out ; a cap- 
ercailzie lofted all at once, with a great rush of winged 
bulk, above the snow-bound forest ; and a white hare 
slid, like a wraith of the winter, down a silent forest 
aisle. 

Then came the White Wolf of the Frozen Wastes, the 
terror of the blizzard, ghost-like, enormous, and swift. 
In dead, grim silence came he, loping his loose, tireless 
wolf's lope, and stopped at a windfall, where two forest 
giants, their decaying strength discovered by the extra 
weight of snow, lay prone, one across the other. 

For a moment he paused, nose up, testing the still, 
cold air; then he leapt upon the upper fallen tree. He 
had, seen up there and clearly, an enormously thick and 
woolly coat, that magnified his already record size. 
You see him trotting along the tree-trunk. Then he 
stopped and stared down into the dark hollow under 
the upper tree. Then he sniffed — audibly. Then he 
licked his nose — and very red was his tongue. Then 
— but this he couldn't help, I verily believe, as he bal- 

226 



. WHEN NIGHTS WERE COLD 227 

anced there with his pricked cars and bright eyes — he 
whined. 

And instantly his little, impatient, dog-like whine was 
answered by a deep, deep growl, that seemed to come 
out of the bowels of the earth. 

He was just in time, as he leapt lightly off the wind- 
fall, to avoid the rush of a vast brown bulk, reeking of 
carrion, furry, terrible, with live-coals for eyes, and 
threshing the air with claws Heaven knows how long, 
which hurled itself like an avalanche out of the hollow 
at him. And that thing was a bear. 

Now, bears do not, as a rule, without extraordinary 
reason, in that land, rouse themselves out of their win- 
ter sleep for the mere whine of a wolf. They are im- 
pregnable where they are, and know it. The extraor- 
dinary reason, however, was present. The white wolf 
was sniffing at it now — the bear's blood-trail to the 
windfall. Bruin had been roused once before that day 
— by beaters. He had then been driven forward, shot 
at by hunters, wounded, escaped, and returned to his 
den. But — but, I give you my word, if those beaters, 
those peasants, had known the White Wolf of the 
Frozen Waste was out, nothing in the wide world would 
have induced them to beat for bears or anything else in 
that vicinity. 

The white wolf stretched himself to a canter, and slid 
away through the forest, dropping the trees past him 
like telegraph-poles past a railway-carriage window. 
He looked like the very spirit of winter, the demon of 
the snows, and stood for that in the ignorant minds 
of the sparsely scattered people — perhaps because at 
a short distance he was nearly invisible. His white 
coat, which was simply a conspicuous curse to him when 



228 WHEN NIGHTS WERE COLD 

there was no snow — which was one reason, maybe, why 
he retired from the limelight to some lonely fastness 
during summer — was an incalculable asset to him in 
winter, and he knew it. 

He ran, with his smooth, loose, effortless lope, per- 
haps a quarter of a mile, then stopped, and putting up 
his head, howled a howl so full of hopeless, cruel yearn- 
ing, so vibrant with desolation, that it sounded like the 
cry of a soul doomed forever to seek something it could 
never find. It was a lugubrious yowl there, in that set- 
ting, and it made one's scalp creep all over one's cra- 
nium. 

And instantly almost, even as the last, long, horrible 
echoes died, sobbing adown the blue-haze perspective of 
the forest glades, the answer came — a far-away, flut- 
tering, wandering howl, like the moan of the wind in its 
sleep. 

The white wolf waited a moment, then howled again, 
and the ghastly sound came back to him, louder and 
nearer this time. 

A third time he howled, and the forest cringed under 
the reply. 

Then at last the shadows between the ranked tree- 
trunks took unto themselves life, and eyes, eyes in pairs, 
horribly hungn-, cruel port-holes of brains, with a 
glary, star}', green light behind them, suddenly ap- 
peared everywhere, like swiftly-turned-on electric 
lamps. There was a whispering rush, as if giants were 
swiftly dealing cards in the silence, and — the White 
Wolf of the Frozen Waste was away, racing like a 
cloud-shadow, rapid and impetuous as a greyhound, at 
the head of a pack of one hundred and twenty-nine 
empty-stomached wolves. 



WHEN NIGHTS WERE COLD 229 

They made no sound as they tore, compact as a 
Zulu impi, over the spotless white, because they had no 
trail to follow, only this huge devil of a leader ; and 
they had their work cut out to follow him, for he was 
the longest-legged male wolf any of them had ever set 
eyes upon. 

Straight as a twelve-inch shell the white wolf headed 
back to the fallen trees and the bear's den. When he 
reached them, he stopped so abruptly that the wolves 
behind him almost sat on their haunches in the effort to 
pull up. Those that failed fell sideways under a rain 
of wicked snaps from him, that followed one another 
quick as the stutter of a machine-gun. 

The pack did not stop — at least, not the flanks of 
it. They swept on without a pause, out and round, like 
flood-water round a knoll, joined at the far side, and 
— were still. As a maneuver, a military maneuver, 
swift, unexpected, faultless, and silent, it was perfect. 

For as long as a man takes to light a pipe there was 
dead silence, broken only by the quick motor-like pant- 
ing of the pack. And one hundred and twenty-nine 
pairs of eyes regarded the fallen trees. 

Then the white wolf, all alone, with hackles up, 
stepped forward and leaped upon the trunk of the tree 
that was poised upon its fellow. He ran lightly up it 
till he was exactly above the hollow formed by the junc- 
tion of the two trees, then stopped, looking down. 

Half-a-dozen of the older and more cunning wolves 
followed him ; the pack surged forward until both trees 
became lined with a row of wolves, without breaking the 
circle of the main pack outside, and then stopped. All 
this in silence. 

Then — but you could almost hear the trees breathe 



230 WHEN NIGHTS WERE COLD 

while he did it — the white wolf yawned very deliber- 
ately, and whined, insolently and very audibly. 

The answer was instant. 

Something rumbled within the den, deep down, like 
a geyser. 

The white wolf whined again, and sprang aside just 
as the bear, maddened with the pain of a .450-caliber 
rifle bullet in his stomach, and seeking a sacrifice, hurled 
out of the dark and up over the tree-trunk, striking, 
with appalling flail-strokes, right and left ; and the 
quickness of those strokes was only a less astonish- 
ment than the agility of the wolves getting out of the 
way of them. But — but he had come out to abolish 
one wolf, that bear ; not one hundred and twenty-nine. 

The white wolf dropped without a sound upon the 
bear's great, broad back. The half-dozen old wolves 
followed him like figures moved by a single lever. The 
pack sucked in with the rush of a waterspout. The 
bear vanished under a wave of fangs and tails, as a sink- 
ing boat vanishes beneath the billows. And the rest 
was the most diabolical devils' riot that ears ever heard. 

The bear unwounded, even if he had been induced to 
come out at all, might have fought his way home again ; 
but the bear wounded and cut off was a different matter. 
He battled as only a cornered bear can battle; but the 
exertion of it gave the .450 bullet its chance, and he 
died — horribly — as they die who are pulled down by 
the starving wolf-pack, and that is not printable at all. 

He took three wolves — smashed-in-heads and chests 
— with him to the other world, that bear, and left 
three others well on the road there. All six followed 
him by the path he had gone when the pack had done 
with him ; but the losses might not improve the temper 



WHEN NIGHTS WERE COLD 231 

of the pack, though they partially stayed the hunger of 
a few. And the white wolf seemed to know that. Full 
devilish indeed was the cunning of that brute. 

Scarcely was the last bone cracked, scarcely the last 
wisp of skin snapped up, than the white wolf, wet, and 
red and wringing over the head, was away again, at full 
speed — and his full speed was a thing to gasp over — 
with a wild and rousing howl that gave the pack no time 
to ponder on its casualties. 

This time also there was no trail, so the pack had full 
leisure to concentrate all its energies upon the job in 
hand, or paw, I should say — namely, galloping. No, 
racing would be the only word ; for the white wolf, 
knowing his kind, perhaps, gave the pack no leisure to 
grow dangerous over its losses or its hunger. Only 
idleness gives time for questions to be asked about 
leadership, and he kept them busy ; and if they wanted 
to keep up with him at all, they must needs extend them- 
selves to the full. 

Soon he led them to a clearing running, straight as a 
railway cutting, through the forest. Out in the clear- 
ing, he dropped his head, howled, flung half round, and 
began to follow tracks ; but the scent was enough for 
him without the tracks. They were the footprints, the 
sleigh-trail, and the hoofprints of the beaters, the hunt- 
ers, and the pack-horses, loaded with game from the 
hunt of the day that had just gone. 

For a moment the pack, even that pack, his pack, the 
pack of the White Wolf of the Frozen Wastes, checked 
a little, shied, and were dumb. They were used to his 
leading them upon some hectic murder-raids, but never 
one quite so blatant as this. 

Quickly, however, the real pain in their empty stom- 



232 WHEN NIGHTS WERE COLD 

achs got the better of them, and they swept round and 
began to follow — half-a-dozen here and there — with 
whimpers. And then, the excitement spreading, they 
all rushed in, and breaking out, with a blood-curdling 
rush, into the full-throated chorus, " Yi-yi-i-ki-yi ! " of 
the wolf-pack in full cry — an M.F.H. who had never 
heard wolves might have mistaken it for the music of a 
pack of hounds if he had listened to it from a distance 
— they swept on after the vanishing white brush of 
their leader, like some great, hurrying, dark cloud- 
shadow, up the trail. 

Anon, going always at their tireless wolf-lope that no 
beast in the world can outdistance in the end, they came 
to a village. Some of the beaters lived at this village, 
and had remained there. The wolves swept on and 
round the miserable place — some actually raced 
through the snowed-up street — and took up the con- 
tinued trail on the other side. 

Anon they came to an open plain, where the trail 
split, many of the beaters that were left striking away 
to another village where they lived ; but the white wolf 
tore straight on along the main trail, the trail of the 
hunters, the attendants, and the pack-horses. And the 
shadows of the wolves in the moonlight kept pace with 
them all that terrible way. 

The plain looked flat, but was gently undulating, 
like some gigantic ocean petrified ; so that, in due time, 
the pack, still giving tongue wildly and terribly, saw 
before them, far, far ahead, a procession of dots strag- 
gling along over the endless, unbroken white. And in- 
stantly their music shut off as if at the wave of an invis- 
ible hand. 



WHEN NIGHTS WERE COLD 233 

Then, as the quarry ran from scent to view, they 
raced. All their long, loose, nickel-steel-limbed, tireless 
gallop before had been nothing to their flying speed 
now. The taint of the blood of the slaughtered game 
from the chase was in their sensitive nostrils. It was 
like the sight of rare wines to a drunkard. Shift ! 
Say, but the way those long-legged demons ate up the 
distance between them and their prey was awe-inspir- 
ing. It was uncanny. It was almost magic. It was 
awful. 

Then things happened, as you might say, with some 
rapidity. 

Three shots rang out in the silence — three shots in 
quick succession. They were fired at the wolves by the 
only man in the group who had an efficient rifle, but 
were really meant to recall the sleighs with the sports- 
men and the rifles, which had gone on. 

The wolves spread out into a long line ; the ends of 
the line crept forward swiftly on either hand, and the 
whole pack raced to the attack in the formation of a 
Zulu impi — in the shape of a pair of horns, that is. 
When the points of the horns got on the far side of 
their " prey," they rushed together, and turned in- 
wards, still at full gallop. 

At this juncture the sleighs came back — at the gal- 
lop, too. Four .450-caliber Express rifle bullets, one 
.375-caliber magazine and one .315-caliber magazine 
bullet, arriving among the wolves in quick succession 
produced no confusion. Not a wolf stopped. Each 
beast continued its tireless gallop, swerving and dispers- 
ing as it raced, and without uttering a sound, till, al- 
most before you could realize what had happened at 



234 WHEN NIGHTS WERE COLD 

all, there was a dwindling crescent of gray specks in the 
background, and four or five other gray shapes — two 
kicking — lying about in the foreground. 

But — and this is where we come in — neither there 
in the distant snow-haze nor close in by the crowding 
hunting-party was the white wolf. 

He had been last on view far in advance of, and head- 
ing, the point of the right-hand horn of the swiftly en- 
circling pack — his usual place, by the way — but 
from the moment the returning sleighs hove in sight, 
and the bar-like gleam of the moonlight could be seen 
upon the ready rifle-barrels — he had seen that, too, 
and knew its meaning — he had been — nowhere. 

Now, before the encircling horns of the pack closed 
round, one of the pack-horses, maddened with fear, had 
stampeded and got clear away. That horse was gal- 
loping now madly across the plain, hidden from view 
by a gentle swell of ground, and — the white wolf was 
racing alongside of it ; and away behind — for few could 
keep up with the tremendous speed of the white wolf — 
another, and an ordinary gray wolf was gliding in their 
tracks. That was a female wolf, who more than once 
before had found it a profitable investment to keep her 
eye upon the doings of the great white leader. 

She saw the white wolf leap, beheld his wrenching side- 
stroke at the terrified horse's throat, heard the horse 
scream, and watched it bound forward. Followed an- 
other leap of the relentless giant white shape; the horse 
seemed to stumble in full gallop, and next instant came 
down headlong. The rest was a whirl of snow, flying 
hoofs, and a horrible worrying sound. Then all set- 
tled down, and as she tore up she found the white wolf 
feeding ravenously against time, bolting his meal as 



WHEN NIGHTS WERE COLD 235 

only the wild members of the dog tribe, hyenas, and 
vultures can. She was starving, that she-wolf, but she 
halted upon her hams, such was the reputation of the 
white leader; but when he failed to snarl at her, she, 
too, fell to, and bolted her meal like a crazy thing. 

Directly he had fed enough the white wolf flung round 
upon his heels, and, with a single quick whimper, was 
gone, streaking over the plain away from the hunters, 
away from the scattered, discomfited pack ; away, away, 
as he had never galloped before. But, then, before he 
had always been the hunter. This time, if he knew 
anything of " Pack Law " and the temper of the pack 
over this bad defeat and heavy loss, coming on top of 
the bad bear " break " — this time, I say, it was he who 
was, or, at any rate, might be, the hunted. And he had 
reasons — very sound and private reasons — why he 
must not meet even one wolf of the pack in combat. 
Wherefore he streaked, stretched flat, and doubled into 
a bow, his shadow chasing him, and the she-wolf — 
afraid to be left alone — chasing his shadow. 

Very often before the white wolf had caused the pack 
to run into dangerous and decimating trouble, but 
always with a feed at the end. He had never before 
sold them a pup, as the saying is, like this one. More- 
over, he felt that his slaying of the horse secretly — and 
they were bound to scent out and read that — would 
not improve matters. Wherefore he guessed that, 
after years of restless rule, it was about time to quit, 
and he quitted. But unfortunately there is only one 
thing harder than becoming leader of a big wolf-pack, 
and that is, ceasing to be leader and — live. 

Five miles over the desolate waste of white — and 
what is five miles, or ten, or fifteen, to a desperate wolf? 



236 WHEN NIGHTS WERE COLD 

— the two beasts ran into a river — literally into a 
river. Ice stretched far out from the bank, yet the 
river was so wide that they could scarce see the oppo- 
site bank. They could see the grinding, growling ice- 
blocks floating all round them which they plunged in, 
however, and they could feel the icy bite of the water — 
water that would stop the action of a man's heart. 

But the white wolf did not attempt to swim to the 
opposite bank, or mean to. He made a detour, and 
landed upon the same side he had started from. He did 
that three times, the she-wolf always following faith- 
fully, because she had now become too frightened to 
stay alone and do anything else ; and then he started 
upon another mad gallop of miles, but this time along 
the bank of the great river. 

Finally he stopped and stared out over the ice, the 
thick water, and the gnashing pack-ice. Far away, it 
seemed, through the snow-haze, he could see a wooded 
height, an immense island, round which the river looped 
in two great arms. 

He knew the spot — trust him. 

No beast in its senses would try to swim the long dis- 
tance across to that island, but from time to time a 
hunted deer had made the attempt, and a few of those 
that tried it had survived the ordeal and populated the 
island. More than once, in heavy snow, the white wolf 
himself, at the head of his pack, had hunted a deer 
down to that very spot, and had watched its head fade 
across the water into the distance. Once he had started 
to follow; but the pack had turned back, and he at 
length after them, snarling at their heels. Now he 
knew how long the swim looked from the deer's point 
of view. 



WHEN NIGHTS WERE COLD 237 

It was an ugly proposition. But — he turned his 
head in the stillness, broken only by the multitudinous 
voices of the ice, and heard a far, far distant multitud- 
inous murmur, and that was no ice, and it settled him. 
It was the united voice of the pack on his trail! 

He paused, ran up and down, gave an odd, little, 
deeply expressive whine, like a puppy afraid to take 
its first bath, plunged in with a rush, and struck out. 
Soon he was out upon a piece of drift ice, shaking 
himself, and began leaping from one lump of floating 
ice to another. It was tricky, slippery, slidy work, and 
a fall might mean a broken leg or a crushed skull ; but 
anything was better than dissolving like mincemeat in 
the jaws of the slavering pack. 

Once, when a long way out, he looked back, and be- 
held the she-wolf, whining piteously as if she were being 
thrashed — and wolves are dumb beasts when " up 
against it " — following him. 

She, too, had heard that wild, terrifying, implacable 
music of the wolf-pack following them ; and although I, 
personally, doubt if they would have touched her — 
unless it was the other she-wolves that did it — she 
seemed to have been smitten by panic, and to prefer the 
deep sea, or the river, rather, to that pack of maddened 
devils. 

And so, slipping, sliding, splashing, swimming, 
scrambling, the white wolf, after the most appalling 
struggle of his life, managed somehow, blindly in the 
end, with sobbing breath and pounding sides, to make 
that terrible passage, and collapse as he landed in a stiff 
white heap, the water frozen in icicles upon his body as 
he landed. 

For a long time he did not move, and it began to 



238 WHEN NIGHTS WERE COLD 

seem as if he had burst his heart. But at last he 
dragged himself to his feet and turned drunkenly — to 
find the she-wolf lying at his side. 

Thoughts came back slowly ; but at length he shook 
himself, and stood erect at his full, immense height. 
He had given the wolf-pack something tricky in the way 
of trails to unravel, but he knew what he had taught 
them too well to build too much on that. And he was 
right, for presently, from far, far across the water, 
came the unutterably terrible baying clamor of the 
pack, moving swiftly along — then it stopped. 

For a long while he waited after that, straining ears 
and eyes out over the moving ice, and the water, and 
the night that was there ; but nothing could he see, 
and nothing more he heard except at last, far away, 
one last, long, lonely, ghastlily lonesome howl — the 
howl of defeat. 

Then it seemed — but truly it may only have been a 
trick of the moonlight as he snarled, revealing his white 
fangs under his wickedly-curled-back lip — it seemed, 
I say, that the White Wolf of the Frozen Waste 
grinned. And good reason had he to grin, for the life 
of the white wolf had been nothing more nor less than 
one long, bad, bold, blustering, bullying bluff! What's 
that? Yes, sirs — bluff! And in this wise. 

Firstly, his extraordinarily long legs gave him a 
height out of all proportion to his real bulk; secondly, 
his abnormally long and woolly coat gave him an ap- 
parent bulk which was out of all proportion to fact ; 
thirdly, his actual bulk was really scarcely larger than 
that of any very large wolf ; and, fourthly — but this 
concerned him only now — he was really quite an old 
wolf; one long past his prime, one quite unable to face 



WHEN NIGHTS WERE COLD 239 

any really full-grown fine young wolf, one retaining 
only his matchless speed by reason of his abnormally 
long legs, and his leadership by terrific and cleverly 
acted ferocity on the strength of his apparent giant di- 
mensions. That was all, but it was enough ; wasn't it, 
boys? Would you care to have changed places with the 
old rascal, and played that bluff out against those odds, 
in that company, for years as he had done? I don't 
think. No, nor I, either. It was some gamble, that. 
What? 

At last the White Wolf of the Frozen Waste turned, 
with an insolent flourish of his brush, and trotted up 
the bank on the heels of the she-wolf, who had come to 
life again and preceded him into the dense tangle of the 
woods, which swallowed him up, him and his darned 
bluff, utterly. 



XV 
FATE AND THE FEARFUL 

We are the little folks — we ! 
Too little to love or to hate. 

RUDYARD KlPLIXG. 

No one ever accused him of not being all there. The 
job was to see what was there. 

A tinj alderman of the red bank-vole people, whose 
tunnels marched with the road through the wood, tak- 
ing the afternoon sun — a slanting copper net, it was 
— at his own front-door under the root of the Scots 
fir, was aware of a flicker at a hole's mouth. He 
looked again, and saw the mouth of that hole was 
empty. He blinked his star-bright eyes in his fat, 
furry, little square head, after the manner of one who 
thought he had been dreaming. But catch a bank- 
vole dreaming! Besides, how about the squirrel over- 
head? He was hanging over a branch where the flicker 
had been, swearing fit to slit his lungs, and old squirrel 
wasn't much given to make mistakes, as a rule. 

The bank vole turned back into his hole, knowing the 
law against taking chances in the w r ild, and the first 
stride fetched him up short in violent collision with an- 
other bank-vole — otherwise red-backed field-mouse, if 
you like — coming the other way. 

The blow, full on the forehead, did not break his 
neck ; but it ought to have done. It cast him clean over 

240 



FATE AND THE FEARFUL 241 

backwards out of his own front-door, where he fell down 
the bank, and was received, all his little short paws 
scrambling for a hold, by a thistle, and would have told 
all the world, with a thin, high squeak, what he had sat 
on, if the squeak had not frozen between his chisel 
teeth. 

There had shot out of the hole, and back, a Thing. 
It might have been the thick end of a whip-lash or a 
spring, and, like a spring, as it recoiled it coiled, and 
was still. 

The bank-vole saw. Most entirely did he see, and 
felt no joy in the seeing, either. Indeed, there was 
no room for mistake in the zigzag black chain down 
the back, in the unspeakably cruel, fixed stare of the 
glassy, lidless eyes, in the short head and flat cranium 
of the true viper — viper, adder, or whatever you like 
to call the calamity without legs, whose other name is 
death. 

Now, bank-voles know all about vipers. They have 
to ; they die, else. They die anyway ; but no matter, 
for they are small and very many. Also, vipers know 
all about voles, field and bank; they specialize in 'em! 

But our bank-vole knew all about the " freezing " 
game, too, and he " froze." My word, how that little 
beggar was still, so utterly bereft of movement that a 
fly settled upon him — about the first and the last that 
would, I should judge! And if a learned native had 
come along the road at that moment — on tiptoe, of 
course — he would have said the viper had hypnotized 
friend vole with fear. Hypnotize your grandmother ! 
But you may take it from me that serpent thing was 
playing his game, too. He was " freezing " to induce 
the quarry to move and give himself away, because, since 



242 FATE AND THE FEARFUL 

the vole was motionless, he had no idea where the little 
fellow was, although he seemed to be looking straight at 
him — in that execrable way snakes have of seeming to 
look straight at everything. 

You think it was a battle of patience? W-e-11, 
maybe. Maybe, too, it was a battle of nerves. I like 
to think so, anyway, for that snake-servant of the 
Devil had none, and the bank-vole had ; and the bank- 
vole's broke under the awful tension — or seemed to — 
and the bank-vole broke the terrifying spell. Also, 
he broke the silence. 

Away down the ditch he went, bouncing like a tiny 
ball of dark thistle-down, all in and out among the veg- 
etation, which, worse luck for him, the ditch being under 
the accursed shadow of the firs, was scanty. And as he 
galloped he squeaked three times — like a little needle 
stabbing the late afternoon silence, it was. 

His removal was one kind of quick dodge in the art 
of quitting; that of the viper another, and a very 
beastW one. The crawling thing was not much more 
than one-tenth of a second after the poor bank-vole in 
getting under way, and the rest was a — was a — oh, 
anything you please ! I call it a sliding flicker that you 
rather " felt " than saw. Also, the thing rustled hor- 
ribly, and Fact can say what she likes. I swear it shot 
along quite flat, crawling, not undulating; but, ough ! 
what a lightning, footless, legless crawl ! No wonder 
the poor little devil of a bank-vole squeaked ! The won- 
der was he didn't faint on the spot, for he knew T what 
was coining. 

Up the bank he pattered, and into that, to him, great 
subterranean highway w T hich seems to be conjointly kept 
up and used by all the mysterious little four-footed 



FATE AND THE FEARFUL 243 

tribes of the field, and which runs the length of prac- 
tically every bank and hedgerow. The place was dark 
and cool and echoing, and bare as the palm of your 
hand, and far cleaner than many palms. It might have 
been cleaned out that very day by a fairy vacuum- 
cleaner ; but it hadn't. It was always like that, clean 
as the proverbial new pin. Heaven alone knows who 
did the " charing " there, but those little furry tribes 
might have given lessons on health in trench warfare, 
I reckon, at a guinea a time — and cheap at that. 
They had found out that dirt meant disease, you bet. 

Down that tunnel drummed the bank-vole, seeking 
to foul his trail with just any other creature; and, the 
highway being, as I have said, a sort of public affair, he 
met first a mouse gone astray, then a mole asleep, then 
a long-tailed wood-mouse, then a short-tailed field-vole, 
then a shrew about as big as your little finger. But 
they must have heard the scrape of the snake's scales 
down that echoing tunnel following hard behind, for 
they avoided our bank-vole like the plague, and dived 
up one or other of the thousand and one side-tunnels, 
which opened on to the main one, too quickly for the 
viper to catch them. 

Then the poor, little, panting bank-vole found him- 
self once more in the open. His beady eyes shone like 
microscopic stars as he paused in a copper bar of set- 
ting sunlight and looked about for a refuge. It 
seemed, by the piston-like throb of the whole body, that 
his heart would burst and slay him out of hand before 
the hated snake could, if he did not jolly soon find one. 

Then a hedge caught his eye, and he climbed it, being 
a good acrobat in his spare time. Beyond, however, 
bringing down upon himself the pecks of several birds, 



244 FATE AND THE FEARFUL 

he did no good, for it seemed that, whithersoever he 
could go, the snake could follow, and — help ! — the 
flat, terrible head was not a yard from him now. 

Worse was to follow, though. He dropped to earth 
again, already a beaten beast ; and, to complete the ca- 
tastrophe, by a miracle he had landed where there was 
not a mouse or mole or vole hole, or any other cover, 
within reach. Only one big clod of earth there was, 
and round that he flung himself, with that stub, scaly 
snout weaving at his very tail, and rolled over and over 
and over — done, too utterly spent even to squeak. 

Then Fate lifted her finger, and things happened. 
All that had gone before didn't count, it seemed. 

The little bank-vole was dimly aware of rolling under 
a big, warm, live shape. He was also aware of a funny 
little fussy grunt in his ear, and that a set of very 
white and business-like teeth flashed for an instant in 
the sun, as they chopped surprisedly at him going un- 
der them, and missed. Thereafter the shape sat down, 
nearly stifling him; and in the same instant the whole 
air seemed to fill with the sudden, long-drawn, venomous, 
terrifying hiss of the viper close at hand. Evidently 
the limbless death had come round the corner too 
quickly, and had all but rammed the shape that 
grunted. 

I can give you my word, though, that the vole was 
not happy one bit. He appeared to be between the 
Devil and the deep sea. He had no confidence in the 
deep sea, or any other thing that he could think of in 
his world. Moreover, the deep sea, besides keeping all 
the air off, was most horribly bristly, even on the belly. 
Wherefore that vole made haste to quit station, so to 
speak. But in a second, it seemed, before he could 



FATE AND THE FEARFUL 245 

clear himself, that unspeakable serpent's hiss appeared 
to sound in his very ear, and the deep sea, folding upon 
itself, made the poor vole yell as if he had touched off 
a live-wire. He had not, of course ; but it was like be- 
ing struck with a dozen pins at once. He would have 
got out if he could, but to move was to discover more 
pins, and he just had to keep where he was, squealing 
fit to burst. 

And that saved the vole, probably. 

Not that there was any magic or rubbish of that 
kind, of course. It was simply that the viper, shooting 
his every inch round the corner in the effort to grab 
the vole's hindlegs then or never, had hit, full pelt and 
nose first, the nice little array of pointed arguments 
carried on the back of the neck of a hedgehog, snuffing 
under the clod, pig-fashion, for spiders. The hedgehog, 
whose phlegmatic disposition and special armament al- 
lowed him the luxury of never being surprised at any- 
thing, promptly and literally shut up, so that long be- 
fore the viper thing had unhooked his nose and was 
waving his forward part about over the hedgehog, with 
murder in his eye and death behind his flickering tongue, 
looking for a place to strike home, old hedgehog was 
rolled up, and snuffling and snoring away inside there, 
like an old man chuckling when he has just cried 
" Mate ! " at chess. 

This trying position continued for perhaps five min- 
utes. It seemed like five days to the wretched bank- 
vole. 

Then the slow temper of the funny old hedgepig 
smoldered gradually alight. His eyes grew red in the 
foxy head of him, his snout " worked," and he snuffled 
and grunted faster and faster. He made up his mind 



246 FATE AND THE FEARFUL 

to fight. And the extraordinary combat began. Lit 
by the blood rays of a setting sun, from a sky all raw 
and red, backed by the blue-gray haze of the watching 
woods, the silence broken only by the ghostly whisper 
of the snake's scales and the tiny pig-like grunting of 
the hundred-spiked hedgehog, that duel started. 

Peering out of a peep-hole in himself, the hedghog 
waited for an opening. It was no blunderer's game, 
this. Death was the price of a slip. He knew, how- 
ever, and accepted the risks deliberately — a plucky 
enough act, when you come to think of it, for a beast 
no more than a foot long and one and a half pounds 
heavy. 

The opening came. Quicker than you could realize, 
the hedgehog half unrolled, and side-chopped with his 
glistening teeth. Quick, too, and quicker, the veno- 
mous, flat serpent head writhed aloft and back-lashed, 
swift as a released spring ; but the hedgehog had ducked, 
or tucked if you like, more than instantly back into 
himself. Followed an infernal, ghastly writhing and 
squirming of the long, unprotected mottled serpent 
body as it struck — too late to stop itself — simply 
spines, spines only, that tore and lacerated madden- 
ingly. Whip, whip, whip! flashed the deadly reptilian 
head, pecking, quicker than light flickers, at the impas- 
sive round cheval-de-frise that was the hedgehog, in a 
blind access of fury terrible to see; and each time the 
soft throat of the horror only tore and tore worse, in 
a ghastly manner, on those spines that showed no life 
and said no word, and defied all. It was a siege of the 
wild, and a terrible one. 

Probably this was the first time in his life that any- 
thing had dared to stand up to that viper. He acted 



FATE AND THE FEARFUL 



247 



as if it was, anyway. Usually his malignant hiss, so 
full of hateful cruelty, was enough of a warning. And 
those who ignored that did not generally live to repeat 
the omission. He seemed utterly unable to understand 
that anything could face his fangs of concentrated 
death and not go out in contortions. And there were 
no contortions about this prickly foe, only an impassa- 
ble front, or, if you love exactness, back. 

Wild things, unlike man, are rarely given to lose 
their tempers. It isn't healthy — in the wild. But if 
ever a creature appeared to human eyes to do so, it was 
that snake. He struck and he struck and he struck, im- 
paling himself ghastlily each time, and using up his 
small immediate magazineful of venom uselessly on — 
uncompromising spikes ! 

At last he drew back, a horrible affront to the fairy 
scene, and, in the snap of a finger, the hedgehog had un- 
packed himself, run forward — a funny little patter it 
was, much faster than you would expect — slashed with 
his dagger fangs, and repacked himself again in an in- 
stant. 

The snake, writhing afresh under the punishment, 
threw himself once more upon the impassive " monkey- 
puzzle " on four legs, but beyond tearing himself into an 
even more ghastly apparition than before, he accom- 
plished nothing. Finally he broke away, and slid off, 
a rustling, half-guessed, fleeting vision, and there was 
fear at last in those awful eyes, that could never close, 
as he went. 

Then it was that the quiet, unobstrusive, retiring, 
self-effacing hedgehog threw off the mask, and hoisted 
his true colors. And yet, if one came to think of it, 
there was no cause for surprise, for was he not a mem- 



248 FATE AND THE FEARFUL 

bcr of the strange, the mysterious, the great Order of 
Insectivora, which includes among its members probably 
the most pugnacious, the most implacable, the most furi- 
ously passionate fighters in all the wild? He fairly 
flung himself, unrolled, and running with an absurdly 
clockwork-toy-like gait, whose speed checked the laugh 
that it caused, was after that viper in considerably less 
than half-a-second, his eyes red as the sun they glinted 
in, his fangs bared for action, his swinish snout uplifted 
at the tip in a wicked grin. No beast to bandy words 
with, this. It was a fight to a finish, with no surrender 
save to death. 

The bank-vole had already fled ; but it was in the 
direction that the fight finally veered that he had gone, 
and so, peeping from between the weed-stems at the 
mouth of a hole, he saw all. He saw the viper, his head 
swaying to and fro, come sliding along, making for that 
very hole ; he heard the sudden quick rustle in the grass 
behind that followed, beheld the dusky, squat form that 
it heralded pounce. He watched the snake's head whip 
round, and drive with all its power in one last desperate 
stroke; watched it straighten out suddenly, and recoil 
in an awful quivering spasm, like a severed telegraph- 
wire, as the hedgehog's razor-sharp teeth cut through 
skin and flesh and backbone; and, trembling from head 
to foot, he witnessed, half-fascinated, I think, the awful 
last threshing flurry of the viper that followed. 

Later, when the moon peeped out of a hole in the 
clouds, and the bank-vole peeped out of one in the bank, 
together — and his beady eyes were not much behind 
the moon for brightness — when the tiny, long-eared 
bats were imitating black lightning overhead, and a sin- 



FATE AND THE FEARFUL 249 

gle owl was hooting like a lost soul seeking a home, away 
in the black heart of the woods, the bank-vole witnessed 
the burial of that hated viper. It was not a big affair. 
Only one person — the hedgehog — took part in it, and 
he was singularly unhurried, for he ate that poisonous 
fiend all up, beginning at the tail, and thoughtfully 
chewing on from side to side to the head — twenty 
inches of snake — as if he, the hedgehog, had been inoc- 
ulated in infancy, and was poison-proof. 

Then, still grunting, he went away, slowly, nosing 
here and there, rustling loudly in that stillness, an odd, 
squat figure in the moonlight ; and the bank-vole thought 
he had seen the last of him, and came out to pass about 
his " lawful occasions," as per custom. 

Now, if you or I had taken our meals after the 
fashion of that " wee, timorous beastie," we should 
probably have departed this life from indigestion or 
nervous prostration inside a month. 

He came very cautiously from his hole, and the first 
thing his fine long whiskers telegraphed him the pres- 
ence of was an oak-gall — one of those round knobs 
that grow upon twigs like nuts, you know, but have a 
fat grub inside instead of a kernel. At the same in- 
stant a leaf rustled, and — flp ! — there was no bank- 
vole. 

Allowing one minute for the passing of whoever rus- 
tled that leaf, and a cloud-shadow, and there he was 
again, back at the gall, his shining eyes, that mirrored 
the moon, being the only visible part of him. He rolled 
the gall over and sniffed, and — that was quite enough, 
thank you. No nut there, and he knew it — by scent, 
I fancy. In that moment something trod softly, ever 



250 FATE AND THE FEARFUL 

so softly, somewhere, and a spray of laced bracken 
swayed one quarter of an inch, and — the bank-vole 
was not. 

Again about a minute's pause, and three bank-voles 
came out together. Our friend was the last, and an- 
other was the first, to discover a little hoard of seeds 
that some other tiny beastie — not a bank-vole — must 
have collected and forgotten all about, or been killed in 
the interval. 

In the wild, it is the law that " they should take who 
have the power, and they should keep who can." It 
isn't a bad law, because it has much to do with that 
other law called the " survival of the fittest," but it is 
apt to come expensive if persisted in. 

Our vole hopped promptly towards the other vole, 
and made out that the seeds were his ; but before any 
kind of ultimatum could be delivered, a twig fell, as 
twigs will sometimes, for no special reason that one can 
see. The noise it made in that stilly wood was aston- 
ishing, and ere the twig had reached the earth there 
wasn't a bank-vole above ground. And yet so aston- 
ishingly quick and evasive are these little creatures that 
in less than thirty seconds there were the two dis- 
putants, each erect upon his haunches, with little hand- 
like forepaws held up and joined under the chin — as if 
they were actresses having their photographs taken — 
fighting, like little blunt-headed furies, for possession 
of those seeds — so it seemed. I say " so it seemed " 
advisedly, since close by, and almost invisible because 
sitting quite still, was another bank-vole, who looked 
as if she were waiting for something; which she prob- 
ably was — a lover. 

It was, however, death that came, and he is a too 



FATE AND THE FEARFUL 251 

attentive lover. The battle had been going on some 
seconds without apparent result, possibly because the 
voles had to bite upwards, shark-fashion, owing to the 
fact that their fighting-teeth are wedge-shaped in- 
cisors, instead of stabbing fangs, when there was a hrrr ! 
That is all, just like that — hrrr! 

Then there were no voles ; but there seemed to have 
been no going of the voles, either. They just were, 
fighting and watching the fight — then they just were 
not. Instead of them, on the very spot where they had 
been, a sheeted ghost, with wings that flapped and 
flapped, and never made any noise, with 'the face of a 
cat, and big round eyes that gleamed, and a snore most 
horrible, had simply been evolved from nowhere, and 
under its claws was the little red-backed lady • who 
waited for a lover. 

Now, the coming of that apparition, whose wings did 
not say " Hough-hough ! " or " Whew-whew ! " like 
other birds' wings do when they fly, thus proving itself, 
or rather herself, to be an owl, and the fight of Mr. 
Hedgehog and the poisoned death, had a direct con- 
nection with, and a bearing upon, the little bank-vole's 
life, although they may not have seemed to have at first. 
If the snake had not run amok against the hedgehog, 
the latter slow personage would have been well out in 
the meadow by that time, reducing the worm popula- 
tion, instead of hanging about and coming up the ditch 
at that moment, with the hot and worried air of one 
who is late. 

What he saw was the owl on the ground, flapping her 
great, soft wings about, within a foot of the nicely, 
neatly, nattily roofed-in nest where he and his lifelong 
wedded wife thought they had hidden cunningly their 



252 FATE AND THE FEARFUL 

four soft-bristled, helpless babies. What he thought he 
saw was the owl engaged in turning one of those same 
babies into nourishing infant owls' food, or " words to 
that effect." And the hedgehog, like most of the order 
Insectivora, is cursed with the temper of Eblis, too. 
Naturally, therefore, things happened, and happened 
the more hectically, perhaps, because Mrs. Hedgehog 
chanced at that moment to be away — attending to the 
last rites — shall we say? — over the form of an ex- 
piring young rat. 

The little pig's eyes of him went red in his funny, 
bristle-crowned head, and just as a clockwork toy 
charges, so he charged, with a quick, grunting rustle 
and far greater speed than any one who knew only his 
usual deliberate movements would have given him credit 
for. 

The owl had only time to turn her cat-like face and 
— hiss. But though that hiss w r ould have been good 
enough as a bluff to frighten creatures who wouldn't 
upset a snake for anything, she was out of her reckon- 
ing upon this occasion. The hedgehog, who dealt in 
snakes as a game-warden deals in tigers, had no nerves 
that way. He just sailed in under the baffling, great, 
flapping wing, and, ere ever the bird of the night could 
spring aloft, had struck. It was a ghastly form of 
warfare, this low running in and wrenching snap. It 
landed right under the armpit, so to speak, and left a 
nasty round hole. And it is worth noting, by the way, 
that precisely the same sort of hole, and in the same 
spot almost, but lower and farther back, was to be seen 
upon the body of the deceased young rat that Mrs. 
Hedgehog was even then attending to — the trade- 
mark of the hedgehogs, that hole. 



FATE AND THE FEARFUL 253 

All the immediate world of the night wild, watching 
from grass-tuft and root and burrow, heard the rasping 
tap of the owl's beak hammering helplessly at the spines 
on the back of the hedgehog, now beside himself with 
rage. Not one of them, too, that did not jump with 
terror — engrained by the bitter experience of hun- 
dreds of generations — at her fiendish scream. Then, 
in a flash, that owl was upon her back, wielding hooked 
beak and stiletto talons, as only she knew how to use 
them ; and the hedgehog, who had, in the blindness of his 
rage, run in to finish the job, shot up clean on his hind- 
legs, taking the clinging, flapping owl with him, while, 
for the first time that night, he uttered a cry other than 
a grunt — an odd, piercing little cry, vibrant with rage, 
or fear, or both. This was rather odd, because or- 
dinarily the hedgehog is a dumb beast, who suffers 
" frightfulness " in grim silence. 

The tables were turned now. The shoe was on the 
other foot, or, to be precise, the foot was on the under- 
side. That is, the owl had got the foe where he lived, 
below water-line, if I may so put it, where, like a battle- 
ship, his armor did not run, and he was soft and vulner- 
able as any other beast. Moreover, he had not trained 
himself in the art of throwing himself upon his back, 
as the owl, who was like a cat in this particular also, 
had apparently done, and since he could not prance on 
his hindlegs, unicorn-fashion, forever, he had to come 
down again, belly and throat first, on that infernal bat- 
tery of talons and beak. 

And he got it all right enough. I give you my word 
that spiny one got it ; but, save for that one first little 
cry, he took his punishment in grim and terrible silence, 
fighting with a blind fury that was awful to behold. 



254 FAT E AND THE FEARFUL 

What happened to him underneath there in those few 
brief, terrible seconds no one will ever know — and that, 
we may guess, is as well perhaps, for there is no sense 
in dwelling upon horrors. What he did, in the short 
time he was given by Fate, is a little more clear. But- 
ting madly down, oblivious of all things, even that un- 
speakable fish-hook beak, grappling like a thing de- 
mented — and I think he was nearly that — he bit deep, 
deep down, through feathers and skin and flesh, home — 
once, twice, and again. 

Then, blindly, brokenly, smothered in blood, rcd-vis- 
aged and horrible, he half-rolled, half blundered free of 
that frightful clinch, and instantly rolled up! 'Twas 
his habit, the one refuge of his life, so long as he 
breathed; his last, and usually, but not always, his first, 
hope. 

The owl struggled somehow, in a cloud of her own 
feathers, to her Feet. The beautiful, fan-like, exquis- 
itely soft wings Happed and beat frantically. There 
came a peculiar musky sort of smell into the air. She 
rose, all lopsidedly, perhaps two yards, flapping, flap- 
ping, flapping with frenzied desperation, before top- 
pling suddenly, helplessly, pathetically, as the big pin- 
ions stopped, and she collapsed sideways back to earth 
again, where, blood-smeared and glaring, lit by the mer- 
ciless, cynical moon, she crouched and coughed — as I 
live, coughed and coughed and coughed, a ghastly cough 
like a baby's, till it seemed as if she would cough her 
heart up. 

Then silence — that wonderful, mysterious, waiting, 
echoing, listening silence of the woods at night — shut 
down, and darkness swept over all. 

When dawn came stealing westward silently over the 



FATE AND THE FEARFUL 255 

still canopy of leaves, both combatants were still there ; 
and they were still here, too, when the sun, silting in 
through a rift in the foliage, found and bathed them. 
The owl was crouched as she had been when the moon 
left her — crouched, and with her wings just a little 
open, like a bird about to take flight ; but she had al- 
ready taken wing on the longest flight of all. The 
hedgehog was, too, just as the moon had left him, rolled 
up in a spiky ball, apparently asleep ; but his sleep, 
also, was the longest sleep of all. And over them both, 
in the heavy silence, could be distinctly heard that hor- 
rible " brr-brr-brr " of flies that told its own story. 

Now, that was in the morning, soon after sunrise ; but 
long before that, indeed the moment the hedgehog had 
first attacked the owl and forced her to turn her atten- 
tion to him, the little female bank-vole, who by some mis- 
chance or miscalculation, had evaded the first terrible 
handshake of the owl which spells death, had rolled 
clear of the fight, and dashed for her life to the nearest 
tussock of grass that offered shelter ; and the first thing 
she fell over there was our bank-vole, " frozen " motion- 
less. He was there because the scene of the fight was 
between him and the holes in the bank, and for the life 
of him he could not muster up courage to run the gaunt- 
let past those dread, struggling forms. 

In the end, there being scarcely sufficient room in the 
tussock for both to hide effectually, and there seeming 
to be some danger of the combatants trampling them 
flat where they lay, he led the way up a tree, whose 
gnarled bole took the ground barely six inches away. 
It was one of those great-great-great-grandfather oaks, 
which, if it had been in a more public spot, w T ould cer- 
tainly have been raised to the dignity of one of the few 



256 FATE AND THE FEARFUL 

hundred trees that hid Prince Charlie. It was not, 
however ; but it had another peculiarity, as the voles 
found out later on. 

Scared out of their little wits by the fury of their 
enemies below, and afraid to go down and bolt across the 
open, even after the cessation of hostilities, past those 
appallingly still, crouched bodies, who, for all they had 
guarantee to the contrary, might be in fiendish, alliance 
crouched there, waiting for them to descend, the two 
voles explored gradually, in their own dainty, little, 
deprecating, creeping way, branch after branch of the 
great spreading patriarch, till suddenly, at the very tip 
of the longest and biggest limb of all, they vanished — 
into ivy. What had happened was quite simple, how- 
ever. There was no trick in it. It was all above- 
board. It was simply that the mighty tree at this spot 
grew close to one of those outcrops of cliff that formed, 
as it were, broken-off pieces from the main cliffs which 
bordered the river and the valley on one side farther up, 
and one of the oak boughs had gradually been annexed 
by the ivy — itself of great age — that clothed the face 
of the cliff. 

Climbing steadily upwards through the network of 
ivy-stems — he had no wish to go down now, for he 
could hear the river talking to itself directly underneath 
him, and a false step meant a clean drop into the swirl- 
ing black depths thirty feet or so below — the bank- 
vole, with his companion in close and trusting attend- 
ance, presently came out on top of the cliff. He found 
himself upon a space all clothed with vegetation, bushes, 
and stunted trees, some hundred yards long. Beneath 
him, as he peered over, he could see the roof of the wood, 
all laid out like a green tablecloth, and here and there, 



FATE AND THE FEARFUL 257 

through gaps, the river, now shrunk to no more than a 
stream, by reason of the fact that men, for their own 
purposes, had dammed its waters about a mile farther 
up the valley, and constructed a reservoir there. 

The voles knew nothing about any dam — then. 
They were satisfied to explore the cliff-top and the crev- 
ices, to discover the tiny eggs of a coal-tit, and remark 
on their flavor ; to nose into every crook and corner that 
came in their way ; to learn the excellent facilities the 
place offered for setting up housekeeping; and to dis- 
cover that no other bank-voles appeared to have found 
their way up there. 

This took time, for they naturally had to flirt in 
between, and so it happened that the sun had been up 
some while before they finally set to improvising a home, 
in a partially earth-filled rocky cleft, with their own 
sturdy forepaws. They had got so far as to dig in out 
of sight, turning every few seconds to push out the loose 
earth, when the dam up above broke, and a few hundred, 
or thousand, for all I know, tons of water dropped into 
the valley — crash ! 

And thus it happened that, when the sun set, those 
two little, big-headed, blunt-nosed bank-voles, looking 
out upon an endless sea of water, above which the top 
halves of the trees in the wood rose like mangroves, 
were, save for a few that had climbed into trees and 
would starve, the only bank-voles left alive, to repopu- 
late that valley with bank-voles, out of all the teeming 
thousands whose burrows had honeycombed every bank 
in the vicinity. Verily, how strange is Fate, " who 
makes, who mars, who ends ! " 



XVI 
THE EAGLES OF LOCH ROYAL 

He makes a solitude, and calls it — peace. — Byhost. 

He comes, the false disturber of my quiet. 
Now, vengeance, do thy worst. 

Shebtdak. 

The rising sun cimc striding over the edge of the 
world, and presented the mountain with a golden crown ; 
later it turned the rolling, heaving mystery of the mists 
below into a sea of pure amber. A tiny falcon — a 
merlin — shot up out of the mist, hung for a moment, 
whilst the sun transformed his wings to purple bronze, 
and fell again, vanishing instantly. Next, a coek- 
grouse, somewhere below the amber sea, crowed aloud 
to proclaim the day, and a raven mocked at him 
hoarsely. 

Then, and not till then, the Chieftain awoke. The 
Chieftain showed as a chocolate, golden-brown, wedge- 
shaped mass of feathers, perched on a lonely pinnacle 
of rock, and, his appalling, razor-edged claws being hid- 
den under the overhanging feathers of his legs, he was 
scarcely striking. Next moment he opened his eyes, 
and was no longer mean, for he was a golden eagle, and 
the eyes of a golden eagle are terrible. In them are 
written hauteur, pride, and arrogant fierceness beyond 
anything on this earth ; there is also contempt that has 

258 



THE EAGLES OF LOCH ROYAL 259 

no expression in speech. He shot out his neck, clapped 
his talon-like beak, and gazed out, over the mist that 
hid Loch Ro3 T al, to the south shore of the loch, where 
lived his son. The loch was, as it were, their frontier, 
the boundary-line that divided the hunting-grounds of 
father and son, and it was seldom crossed by either 
bird. 

A little wind rose somewhere in a mountain gorge, 
and went shrieking down, rending the mist asunder, as 
a man rends carded wool. And behind the wind slid 
Chieftain, who knew the value of a hidden descent. He 
shot through the rent, racing down with the sun's rays 
to earth, and surprised a cock-grouse at his breakfast, 
nipping off the tender heather-shoots daintily one by 
one. So swiftly did Chieftain fall that the grouse never 
knew what had killed him ; he was dead — in a flash. 
The great eagle swept on with the grouse in his claws, 
and, without stopping, beat upwards again. 

Suddenly, without any warning, a bullet came sing- 
ing over the rolling heather, and passed, with a whine, 
close to Chieftain's head. Later came the blasting re- 
port of a rifle. As for Chieftain, he gave one amazed 
scream of outraged and startled dignity, dropped his 
grouse, and went ; and when an eagle goes in that way, it 
is like the passing of a rocket. 

A few minutes later Chieftain was whirling round 
high up among the crags, calling imperiously for his 
wife, as a king might call. And she came, she came, 
that huge, fierce bird, with a trickle of blood dripping 
down her neck, and a fire in her eye that was unpleasant 
to behold. She, too, had been fired upon and grazed 
by a bullet, and she said so in no measured tones. Now, 
the laird of Loch Royal deer forests had never allowed 



260 THE EAGLES OF LOCH ROYAL 

his eagles to be fired at or killed. They were part of 
the family possessions, as it were — always had been 
for generation upon generation ; and, moreover, they 
kept down the grouse on the deer forests — which was 
useful, since the grouse is the red deer's unpaid sentinel, 
and give him warning of the crawling, creeping stalker. 

Wonderfully the two eagles circled round one an- 
other in mighty, still-winged glidings, effortless, ma- 
jestic, masterly, sometimes together, sometimes apart, 
drawing ever away northward with scarcely a wing- 
flap, without, it seemed, any visible force to drive them, 
till they swam, like specks on the eye-ball, miles away 
and upwards round the white-mantled peaks. 

Here, so easily can birds pass from scene to scene, 
they were in another world, an Arctic land, silent as the 
Arctic, bare as the Arctic, cold as the Arctic, and, at 
first sight, desolate and uninhabited as the Arctic ap- 
pears to be. But this was only an example of Na- 
ture's wonderful magic. Desolate it was. Uninhab- 
ited — no. 

So far as the eagles could see, there was only a 
raven, cursed with a far-advertising blackness, who sat 
upon a splintered fang of rock and mocked them hol- 
lowl} 7 . But he was not the only creature there. 

Sweeping down with a hissing rush over a giddy slope 
of shale that looked perpetually upon the brink of a 
general slide down en masse, with their immense shad- 
ows underrunning them, the eagles startled suddenly by 
their unexpectedness a great red beast into motion. 
There was a clatter of antlers, a click of hoofs, a little 
shower of stones, and away went a superb stag, a 
" royal," a " twelve-pointer," lordly and supercilious, 
picking his way without a slip on that awful incline. 



THE EAGLES OF LOCH ROYAL 261 

But until he moved, even he had been quite invisible, 
bang in the open though he was. 

The eagles, following him and swooping at him with 
imperious savagery, because they were still angry and 
upset, though never really coming near him, bustled 
him into taking that awful path at a loose hand canter, 
not so much, I think, because he, the king of the forest 
— and this, this lost, lone scene, was part of the local 
conception of the word " forest " — cared the sweep of 
a " brow-tine " for the eagles, as because he was star- 
tled and uncertain as to what was supposed to be hap- 
pening. And the stones spurned by his neat hoofs — 
he seemed to kick most of them down behind him as he 
finished with them, each making for itself its own minia- 
ture avalanche — helped to add to the sudden con- 
fusion. 

Then it was as if a shell burst in front of him — right 
under his haughty nose — and he moved exactly eight 
feet one inch without touching the ground ; also, in do- 
ing it, he cleared a five-foot-seven-inch bowlder, so ab- 
solutely without the slightest sign of an effort that he 
seemed to have been blown upwards. It is worth not- 
ing, because twenty seconds before he had been too lazy 
to clear a four-foot heather-bush, and had gone through 
it. 

The " shell " had been a party of ptarmigan very 
much flustered and upset by being all but galloped over ; 
not the white and frozen ptarmigan of the cheap poul- 
try warehouse, but the " live " proposition of that name 
in their gray, or usual, disguise, posing as stones among 
many thousand that lay around the summits. 

Wild horses would not have put the ptarmigan on 
wing in face of those terrible, sliding, underrunning 



262 THE EAGLES OF LOCH ROYAL 

shadows of death — indeed, one had been lying within 
two yards of the Chieftain, as he slid back low to 
ground after stooping at the lordly stag — but this 
crashing avalanche of shale with the king of the forest 
atop was too much for them, and they went down the 
" hill " into the nothing and the far distance that lay, so 
to speak, almost at one's feet, like a spatter of shrapnel. 

At the same instant two gray shadows evolved them- 
selves out of the very ground, and slid away, swift as 
scudding clouds, up the slope ; and a third gray form, 
also apparently sprung from nowhere, rose from before 
them, and dropped like a spent projectile into the low- 
lands. They were two mountain hares and an old sin- 
ner of crow; but the tiling that caught the Chief- 
tain's stabbing eye most was none of these. 

Both eagles had, with half-shut wings, dropped like 
mighty barbs towards the dim, blue distance of the vale, 
after the hurtling ptarmigan : but in an instant their 
great vans respread, their big, wedged tails swiftly 
fanned, and with ever;- available brake on, as it were, 
they fetched up almost short. Then they both de- 
scribed a single, gliding, calm, lazy-looking half-circle, 
and settled upon a turret rock that shot fifteen feet up 
from the mountain's shoulder. 

Above them, the snow shimmered and glistened blind- 
ingly. Below, the warm mists of the dales steamed 
off under the beating sun. Loch Royal la} T like a 
mighty, burnished shield to the southward; and north- 
ward, peak rose behind peak in everlasting grand per- 
spective. 

Near them was only the lonely slope, bare now, it 
seemed, of all life. But they thought otherwise. 
Their unspeakably fierce gaze was focused upon what 



THE EAGLES OF LOCH ROYAL 263 

looked like a grained slab, like any other grained slab, 
if it had not all at once begun to twitch, and so — 
even then one could only make out the faint outline 
of a body — turn gradually into a wild cat asleep on 
his side. The twitching was not the result of a fit, 
but of dreams. Probably he had not meant to go to 
sleep at all — in a land of golden eagles ! He had 
merely meant to bask in the sun, within instant spring 
of a handy hole between the stones if anything in the 
enemy line turned up. That very sun, however, had 
conspired with drowsiness to betray him, and — some- 
thing in the enemy line had turned up. 

Even so, I doubt if the golden eagles, w T ith all their 
wonderful prismatic binocular vision, made out the cat, 
as man could. Birds have not that power, as man has. 
The twitching they were instant to see. The cause of 
it they must have, equally instantly, suspected. Cer- 
tainly, however, was a long time coming to them. Pre- 
cisely when it did, no man knoweth. They remained 
like carvings or very fine figures cast in bronze, and as 
immovable as the same, for the best part of an hour, 
if you please ; and during that time all the sign of life 
that either of them gave was to wink a yellow eyelid, as 
quickly as an instantaneous shutter winks, several 
times. 

At the end of that period a rain-squall came racing 
and howling round the summit. It passed in a few 
seconds, and left mist — cloud, if you like — damp, 
dank, and chilly, and a dead calm, in its w T ake, and — 
the Chieftain had vanished (I told you he knew the value 
of a hidden descent). But goodness and his own arro- 
gant self alone knew when or where ; in the squall, most 
likely. But he had certainly vanished. 



264 THE EAGLES OF LOCH ROYAL 

The Chieftain's mate sat on, as stolid, and as solid, 
and as statuesque as ever. She had not moved when 
he evaporated, or given any sign whatever. 

With the coming of the mist, the cat woke up. The 
cold probably awoke him. He was not pleased. He 
had come to get warm, not cold. He arose and 
stretched himself, baring all his claws and fangs with 
lazy insolence, for any whom it might concern to see. 

Then — he collapsed, falling as if the slab on which 
he stood had slidden from under him, and remained — 
flattened tense, wide-eyed, and dangerous. 

The Chieftain's wife had jerked her head and sneezed. 
At least, she had yanked her cranium quick as quick, 
and made a noise. It seemed like a sneeze. For the 
rest, she remained as motionless and expressionless as 
bronze Buddha, her wonderful orbs scowling at the wild 
cat. 

Then that cat got off that slab of rock. I say got 
off, but it would be more correct to say that he slid off 
sideways on his tummy — flat. One had difficulty in 
seeing that he moved. His inscrutable, wide, sinister, 
yellow-green eyes were fixed upon the Chieftain's wife. 
The whole of his attention was fastened, focused, con- 
centrated upon the Chieftain's wife. And there he 
made his mistake. He forgot about the Chieftain him- 
self, but the Chieftain had not forgotten about him. In 
fact, the Chieftain was there, on the spot, or over it, 
rather, exactly above the wild cat's head, five hundred 
feet above, and very slowly revolving upon wide, out- 
stretched pinions, as if hung by invisible, slowly swung 
wire from heaven. 

If the cat had looked up ! But, then, the cat would 
not have been a wild four-footed animal if he had. In 



THE EAGLES OF LOCH ROYAL 265 

all the aeons four-footed wild-folk never seem to have 
learnt to look up, and, for the omission, die some pain- 
ful deaths that might otherwise be avoided. I do not 
say that none of them ever look up — they do, but it is 
seldom. 

Indeed, finally this wild cat did look up ; he could not 
well help it. There was a sound like the swift descent 
of a smiting sword above him. But he was seconds too 
late. 

Seconds before, the Chieftain had vanished again. 
Nay, he had changed. His wings had shut, and — he 
had turned into a line, a dark streak drawn, almost as 
lightning draws itself, from heaven to earth, thus — 
wh-r-r-r-ssss-sh ! 

It was then that the cat looked up — just in time 
to receive the Chieftain's black tiger-talons, upon bril- 
liant yellow claws, clashing against his own ivory fangs, 
and — well, in his eyes. 

The Chieftain's wife flung from her strange self her 
immobility, flung out a scream, flung open her pinions, 
and — shifted. She could not have arrived upon the 
scene more than three seconds after her lord — but not 
by any means master. She was certainly not half that 
time getting to work. 

I am not going to describe the struggle that followed, 
in deference to certain good, kind, and well-meaning 
people who are unable to face the stern realities of life, 
or — to save their country. Such things, however, 
must be ; and they would not happen if it were not for 
a hard, though very sound, purpose, among beasts as 
among men. Nature is far-seeing and very wise. 
Moreover, she hates hypocrisy, and — well, we may not 
all be butchers, but most of us eat meat. 



266 THE EAGLES OF LOCH ROYAL 

It was certainly a very great confloption, for, of 
course, that wild cat fought like a — like a wild cat, 
which is like a Welshman, and I cannot say more than 
that. And in the end the whole inferno, being upon 
a very sharp slope, began to slide, and slid, dragging a 
welter of dust and raw earth and feathers and fur after 
it, in an avalanche of its own, till it fetched up in a 
tangle of mountain-ash roots and furze two hundred 
feet below, where it furiously and fearfully, in one wild, 
awful, whirling flurry, ended. 

After that the Chieftain dragged what was left of 
that wild cat out of the bushes, where he had tried to 
jamb and crawl and burrow himself, out into the open 

— well into the open — so that the eagles could look all 
round, which they like to do, being birds of high degree 

— also vermin, or counted as such by gamekeepers of 
low degree. 

The pair — Heaven and the laird alone know how 
long they had been good and faithful partners in life — 
thereupon set to hooking at one another with their 
horny, dragon-like beaks, gripping with black-taloned 
yellow claws that even a Hercules would shake hands 
with just once, beating with monster wings that would 
knock you or me silly, snapping horny, resounding 
snaps, and generally " not 'arf a-carryin' on " in the 
approved and correct modern matrimonial manner. 
So it appeared, at least ; but among eagles — within 
the royal circle, that is to say — such things might 
be their way of paying compliments, for you cannot 
expect feathered couples of the royal blood to behave 
like a pair of mere love-birds. 

Then came the bullet. 

It was a neat, long, nickel- jacketed, lead-nosed bullet 



THE EAGLES OF LOCH ROYAL 267 

of some .300-caliber, and its own report was chasing 
it. It sang a high-pitched, plaintive little song all 
alone to itself as it traveled along through the fine, 
champagne-like mountain air, at about thirteen hundred 
feet per second, and it was aimed to hit the Chieftain 
exactly in the full of the chest. That was why, I sup- 
pose, it hit the wild cat smack in the backbone, and 
killed that poor beast all over again. But you can 
never tell with bullets. 

It might be mentioned here that just as turtle-soup is 
to their worships, so is wild cat to golden eagles — a 
bonne bouclie par excellence, so to say. They do not 
get it every day, or every month, for the matter of that 
— at least, not in these islands of enlightenment, for 
the wild cat shares with them the honor of being a mar- 
tyr of Fate, and it is on the index expurgatorius of the 
gamekeeper also. 

But, I give you my word, those two mighty birds left 
that wild cat uneaten. I say " left " him advisedly, for 
it was rather a matter that they had left him than that 
they did leave him. Anyway, they were not near him, 
not an}^where near him, and I suppose they went. 
There had arisen a noise as if all Regent Street had 
at that moment rustled its combined " silk foundations," 
and — there were our eagles far, far away, and in 
opposite directions, melting quicker than real sugar- 
knobs in hot grog into the haze of the distant sky. 

And after that the Chieftain and his wife glided up 
into the setting sun till it swallowed them in a red glory, 
and when the sun had burnt itself out, swam — swam 
stupendously and wonderfully — through ether down 
to bed. Bed with them that night consisted in sitting, 
regally enthroned among clouds, upon a black, rock 



268 THE EAGLES OF LOCH ROYAL 

bastion exactly above a clean drop of not much more 
than six hundred feet, and rocked by " the wracked 
wind-eddies " of the mountain-tops. The good God 
who made all things — even the animal that had fired at 
them — alone knows what they dreamt about, that su- 
perb, intolerant, fierce, haughty, implacable couple. 



Now, the man, the — er — lord of creation, who had 
fired that shot — in fact, all those shots that day — 
was Pig Head, the back-to-the-lander from the South. 
Pig Head argued that deer forests are farms lying idle. 
And the laird had offered to rent him a farm at one- 
and-nothing-three the acre to disprove it. Pig Head 
had taken the offer. He disapproved of lairds as un- 
revolutionarics. He hated red deer because they were 
too smart for him to kill wholesale, and he loathed 
golden eagles because they were the pride of the " hills." 
But he kept his opinions to himself, because he val- 
ued his neck. The People of the Hills would have 
stretched it very much longer than his own long tongue 
if he hadn't. In his heart he also hated the " op- 
pressed " People of the Hills for that they loved their 
laird, regarded deer-stalking as a religious rite, and — 
wore kilts ! 

As a matter of fact, Pig Head's farm never grew any- 
thing more than some clinging heather, a little cross- 
leaved heath, patches of furze, a clump of storm-bent 
Scotch firs or so, and rock — mostly rock. 

Pig Head had only been able to get what he thought 
was his own back upon that day by firing at the eagles, 
because the laird and the stalkers, the gillies, the keep- 



THE EAGLES OF LOCH ROYAL 269 

ers, and the People of the Hills, were away, all away, 
at a sheep-dog trial, or a clan meeting, or something. 
After that he had to work in silence, and he did. 

There are always people who will buy a golden eagle 
" British caught," and those who don't want live ones 
will take 'em dead, and have them stuffed. They like 
to be able to set 'cm up in the hall among other stuffed 
birds, and boast that they shot 'em. Other people of 
a like decayed mind come and look at them, and offer 
money for them at sales out of jealousy. That's col- 
lecting. 

Now, somewhere, somehow, sometime during his 
checkered career, Pig Head had heard, or read, of a 
way of catching golden eagles. He proceeded. 

Upon an unholy and cold shaly slope well up among 
the clouds, the mist, and the ptarmigan, Pig Head had 
hollowed him out a hollow, roomy enough for himself to 
crouch in. He was the sort of man that crouched — 
and " grouched." Over the top he put a nice big slab ; 
the walls were of piled stones, and at one end was an 
aperture eight inches or so long by about one foot. 
Being made of its surroundings, the hiding-place did 
not look at all suspicious — from a bird's point of view. 

Finally, upon the morning after the unsuccessful 
shooting, and before it was light — this was necessary, 
for there is no knowing how far the eyes of eagles can 
see — Pig Head ensconced himself in this hiding-place. 
It was perishing cold, and Pig Head, who did not smoke, 
and never drank whisky — only gin — was blue of nose 
and numb of hand. A good plaid would have helped 
him, but he abhorred plaids. 



2 7 o THE EAGLES OF LOCH ROYAL 

The dawn came up over the mountains, the mists 
sank down to the vales, and the dawn wind, lean and 
searching, went whispering over the hills. 

Then a speck grew out of the heights, out of the west 
and the dark, and growing and growing momentarily, 
became a rustling, sinister, untidy, heavy shape, which 
anon settled upon a rock, and croaked, "Glock! 
glock ! " twice, almost like a bark, in a deep and sepul- 
chral voice. To it was added another sable form, 
coming down from the lonely stony heights, and the 
two sat together, remarking, as they looked — but their 
wonderful eyes must have seen it very far away — at 
the bait. It was the wild cat turned inside-out, and 
other things, on a slab outside the aperture before men- 
tioned, that was at one end of Pig Head's hiding-place. 
And the black specters were ravei 

" Ou ! " they said ; then " Aw ! " then again " Ou ! " 
One remarked " Augh ! " and the other agreed — or, it 
may have been, disagreed — with an "Au!" 

Evidently the wild cat, in a disguise in which he 
would not have known even his own self, looked very 
enticing, and he and the situation generally were being 
discussed from all points of view. 

I say from all points of view advisedly, because, 
although the ravens discoursed much over their council 
of war, they would not come within a hundred yards, 
and it was a voice from the semi-dark, or western, side 
which finally stayed them in the very act of unfolding 
their big, rounded wings to fly away. 

" Krar-krar-krar ! " rasped the voice ; and the ravens 
folded their wings again to wait and see ! 

It was a gray crow, and the ravens knew that never 
was gray crow an innocent lost in the wilderness. 



THE EAGLES OF LOCH ROYAL 271 

If the gray, or hoodie, crow — always rememtx 
that crows, gray or black, arc servants of the Devil, 
just as ravens are, and very cunning — if the crow, I 
say, thought that here was food without some horrible 
form of hidden death lurking behind it, then the chances 
were the gray crow was right. They knew " hoodie," 
3 r ou see. Anyway, if they let him go first, and he was 
wrong, then it would be his funeral, not theirs. 

Wherefore the gray crow went first to the bait, and 
Pig Head, half-dead with cold and peering out of a 
tiny peep-hole, called down blessings of a weak and 
watery nature upon his black head. And well he might, 
for if the gray crow had shied at the bait, then every- 
body else would have taken his tip. 

They took his tip now, for in a few minutes there 
was a " hurrr-hrrr-hrrr "of wings, and, one after the 
other, down came the ravens. 

Anon the ravens were joined by a third, volplaning 
from some cloud-covered peak, where he must have been 
watching all the time; and the crow was joined by four 
accomplices, who just drifted up from nowhere special, 
as gray crows have a habit of doing when there is car- 
rion afoot. 

But Pig Head had not come there to entertain ravens, 
nor was he at that moment laying up a store of lum- 
bago for the purpose of gratuitously feeding disrepu- 
table gray crows. He had other quarry in view. The 
gray crows, however, were his best asset. They quar- 
reled, and were loquacious, and, in fact, they made a 
most infernal noise; and he had stated that the noise 
was necessary to his success. This would seem as if 
eagles hunt by sound as well as by sight. Pig Head 
was the first person I ever heard that suggested so. 



272 THE EAGLES OF LOCH ROYAL 

But, be that as it may, the racket increased as the sun, 
robed in purple, gold, and crimson splendor, rose over 
the mountain-tops ; and with the sun came the only 
bird, so the ancients tell us, who can look the sun full 
in the face without blinking — Aquila, the eagle. 

But — make no mistake about this point — he who 
came then, grandly, proudly sweeping over the blue, 
dim ridges, was not the Chieftain himself, for this was 
not the Chieftain's territory, but the Chieftain's son; 
he who lived, as you will remember, upon the other, or 
south, side of Loch Royal. 

Haughtily, statelily, as a king might go to his throne, 
so did the Chieftain's son let himself down, in stupen- 
dous hundred-foot spirals, to a pinnacle of rock, 
jagged, saw-edged, and perpendicular, about two hun- 
dred yards away ; and the ravens and the gray crows, 
who saw him coming, made great and sudden hostile out- 
cry at first, and then, as he folded, foot by foot, his 
immense pinions about him, and sat there erect, with 
his piercing, scowling gaze bent upon them, they were 
dumb. 

And Pig Head, aching with cramp and cold in his 
hiding-place, knew that the quarry was at hand. But 
if you think, because the eagle was at hand, that the 
time was at hand too, you don't know eagles. They 
may be, upon occasion, as quick as the spring of death, 
but they can also be as slow as the wrath of Heaven. 
And that bird there, the great, grand, haughty, unbend- 
ing Aquila chryscctiis, that golden eagle, sat. I say, he 
sat. And there, so far as he was concerned, appeared 
to be an end of it. He might have been a carven cope- 
stone of the very granite fang he sat upon, for all the 
appearance of life he gave, except that occasionally — 



THE EAGLES OF LOCH ROYAL 273 

say at ffl tccn-minutc intervals — he winked a yellow- 
lidded wink. And the w T ink was almost as unlifelike and. 
uncanny as the bird. 

And the gray crows and the ravens gulped and quar- 
reled, with one eye upon the eagle and one upon their 
job; and Pig Head — Pig Head sat and cursed that 
eagle, from his horny beak to his barred tail, through 
chattering — and aching — teeth. But the eagle never 
moved a feather. 



We are told that Alexander sighed for other worlds 
to conquer. So it was with the Chieftain, who was not 
Alexander. 

After his wife had gone a-hunting eastward — a 
wonderful and gigantic silhouette floating and dwindling 
into the furnace of the rising sun — the Chieftain sat 
upon his ledge of rock, staring across the gleaming, 
painted, glassy expanse of Loch Royal, southward, to 
the dominions of his son. 

He had seen his son, a speck in the dawnlight, in- 
visible to our eyes, sailing from peak to upflung peak. 
He had seen him suddenly check and circle downwards. 
And then — he had not seen him. 

He had waited two hours, with that patience which 
birds and reptiles have, and still he had not seen him. 
Yet, if during that time he had risen, the Chieftain must 
have seen him. And the Chieftain knew that. He knew 
also that a golden eagle very rarely makes a " kill " so 
big that he has to remain with it two hours. The 
alternative, therefore, would seem to be death or car- 
rion; and the way in which he had circled down would 
seem to suggest carrion. And it is written among the 



274 THE EAGLES OF LOCH ROYAL 

laws of the king of birds that when carrion is about, 
the strict rules and regulations as to the inviolability 
of the frontiers may be, in sonic degree, broken. 

Therefore the king unfurled his overshadowing vans, 

and launched down the lake with mighty, 

powerful strokes, like the steady thrust of marine cn- 

r ould go an I see. 

Five minutes i ter the Chieftain was as motionless as 

his son, | like him, too, upon a rock, watching 

and footpads of the moors squabbling 

over the bait — t! to see what they were 

doing, for they hid to keep one eye upon each eagle — 

and about two hundr ay on the other side. 

This in somewhat, for within 

only about another h tin- Chieftain's son rose, 

}, flew dou n to the bait, send- 
ing the ravens and the crows up in a cloud, like blown 
bits of burnt paper, as he came to anchor. And it 
>a as curioi s th t, i i ess, the royal 

bird's as] - no loi tnd. He flew heavily 

and clumsily to the spot. He settled without grace, 
and almost o\ ced on to his Grecian nose, lie 

clutched, and tore, and gulped, and gorged like a vul- 
ture. Thus Nature al vays dr t actors for their 
You may hav< noticed it. 
But Pig Head — Pig Head was chuckling. He had 
silently and softly removed the clod of peat that blocked 
perture before mentioned. Running through this 
cord whose other end was fast< p ! to 
the bait, and every time the great eagle wrenched and 
tore at the flesh, he very, v< r y pulled the bait 
Is him. He did not move when the mighty bird 
' ad up, gulping, you will note; for even Fig 



THE EAGLES OF LOCH ROYAL 275 

Head knew that an eagle nearly standing on his head 
and tugging, and not feeling the difference between his 
own tugs and the tugs on a cord, is not the same 
as an eagle with his head up and eyes stabbing every- 
where at once. 

At last the victim had been drawn, upon the bait, 
within reach, and Pig Head, slipping his hand through 
the opening, grabbed the thick, powerful legs of the 
bird, and pulled. There was one mighty upheaval of 
vast vans, and — no eagle ! What happened down in- 
side the hiding-place was more or less private. There 
were sounds as if a young earthquake were getting 
ready to be born in that place; but in the end the 
Chieftain's son had his legs tied, and suffered the in- 
dignity of being ignominiously thrust into a filthy sack. 
He said nothing during that argument, but his looks 
were enough to kill anything with a thinner hide than 
Pig Head. 

Immediately Pig Head got ready for the Chieftain. 
What's that? Yes, the Chieftain is right. That 
great, haughty bird had not moved. You see, eagles 
are not educated up to seeing their full-grown sons 
disappear into the bowels of the earth without explana- 
tion or warning given. There is nothing in their ex- 
perience to meet the phenomenon. Consequently they 
don't tumble, as a rule, and — well, listen for yourself. 

In a short time — a short time for an eagle ; not 
less than half-an-hour, really — the Chieftain flapped 
heavily to the bait, and fed — beastily, if the truth 
must be told. 

He was bigger than his son, and heavier, and knew 
more about the world, and Pig Head was longer in 
seeing a fair chance to make a grab at the royal legs. 



276 THE EAGLES OF LOCH ROYAL 

At last, however, the chance came, and Pig Head 
grabbed. The Chieftain naturally lost his balance, and 
before he knew what had happened he was inside Pig 
Head's " booby-hutch." 

The Chieftain, however, was not an ordinary bird, 
not even an ordinary eagle. Moreover, he must have 
been a great age, older even than Pig Head. Be that 
as it may, the Chieftain believed mightily in the wild 
maxim which says, " They should take who have the 
power, and they should keep who can." 

And upon that he acted. 

It all happened in a flash. Like lightning his right 
wing came round with a terrific flail-stroke, and hit 
Pig Head in the face at the precise instant that the 
surgical instrument he carried as his beak sank deep 
into one of Pig Head's calves. The Chieftain was 
upside-down at the moment, and his legs were tied to- 
gether, but that made no difference to the savagery of 
the blow. 

Pig Head uttered one howl of agony, and tumbled 
backwards, and his devil saw to it that he should tumble 
backwards upon the very sack wherein lay the Chief- 
tain's son, squirming with rage. The Chieftain's son 
was a son of his father, and hearing the young hurricane 
of his father's wings, and feeling the intolerable weight 
of Pig Head sitting involuntarily down upon him, 
struck for the cause like a good un — struck, with his 
cruel, hooked bill, through sack, through trousers, 
through pants, and home through flesh, and Pig Head 
rebounded into the air considerably quicker than he 
had gone down, hitting his head against the roof, a 
resounding whack, and yelling fit to awake all the devils 
in cinders. And he did not go alone. Upon one calf, 



THE EAGLES OF LOCH ROYAL 277 

and upon — another portion of him, the Chieftain and 
the Chieftain's son went with him. 

Very few men have ever left a powder-magazine on 
fire in quicker time than did Pig Head leave his hiding- 
place, and none could have made more noise in the 
process. The Chieftain stuck to him lovingly, and the 
Chieftain's son, sack and all, seemed determined never 
to leave him ; and Pig Head was nearty demented with 
pain as he leapt out, caracoling wildly, into the light 
of daj T , and into the arms of — only the laird, the 
head stalker, four gillies, and two collies. 

They had come to find him, these stern-faced, long, 
lean men, on account of " information received." And 
they had found him. But they did not speak. They 
w r ere Scotch. Nor did they screw out a smile among 
them. They were Jocks ! They acted — being High- 
landers. 

Four hands like iron claws seized Pig Head, and 
tipped him on end, even as he had tipped the eagles. 
Two knives went " snick " as they opened, then " wheep- 
w T heep " as they cut. Several pieces of cord and bits 
of sacking flew into the air. There was one colossal 
upheaval of wings, a feathered whirlwind hurling every- 
body every way — and the Chieftain and his son, re- 
leased and scandalized, offended and enraged beyond the 
rage of kings, rose sw r iftly into the air with mighty, 
threshing strokes that simply hurled them aloft like 
powerful projectiles — into the heavens, as it were 
terrible avenging spirits of the tempest. A chaos, a 
rush, a mighty blast of air, and — they were gone ! 

Then the laird turned to Pig Head, and, " Mon, ye 
dinna ken th' laird. If ye did — w-e-e-1, Ah'm thinkin' 
ye'd understand." 



XVII 
RATEL, V.C. 

Between the clumps of the stunted acacias the sun 
beat down with the pitilessness of a battleship's furnace, 
and it was not much better in the acacias themselves. 
Save for a lizard here and there, motionless as a bronze 
fibula, or a snake asleep with eyes wide open, or the 
flash of a " pinging " fly, all Nature seemed to have 
Med from that intolerable white-hot glare and gone to 
sleep. 

But the hour of emancipation was at hand, and the 
dim caverns of shade — what there was of it — stirred 
strangely. A hundred yards away a blotch of shadow 
beneath a group of stunted trees swayed and broke up 
into several zebra moving off to water. Fifty yards 
distant the inky shade that carpeted the earth under a 
bare outcrop of rock gave up a single gnu antelope bull 
and a Grant's gazelle whose lyrate horns were as won- 
derful as his consummate grace. 

Thereafter came sound. Till then there had been 
only heat, the first hints at movement, and the terrifying 
silence of the wilderness. Even the birds had been 
dumb. Now came " a feathered denizen of the grove " 
with a peculiarly arresting, grating chatter, a noise no 
one could overlook, and few could help investigating. 
And finally, brazenly, impudently, excitedly flitting 
'. ^>n branch to branch, the chatterer evolved slowly out 

278 



RATEL, V.C. 279 

of the ragged bush-choked landscape, a dusky little 
bird, seemingly a bird of no importance, scarce larger 
than a lark. 

Putting personal appearance aside, however, this 
feathered one, who dared to shatter the slumber of the 
everlasting wilderness, seemed to be under the impres- 
sion that he was of vast importance. Moreover, his 
business appeared to be pressing and urgent, so that he 
could neither brook delay nor take " No " for an 
answer. It was as though he was under a desperate 
need to take you somewhere or show you something, and 
you must follow him — must; there was nothing else 
for it. 

But nobody cared. The zebra trooped off without 
turning their striped heads ; the gazelle, weighted under 
his horns, and the gnu bull stalked away unattending; 
the lizards remained fixed in a permanent attitude of 
attention ; and the snakes continued to stare at nothing. 
No one took the slightest notice. 

Then came the reply. 

It was as if a person or a thing, deep down in the 
bowels of the earth, hearing the bird, stirred in its 
sleep, and shouted up, " I come." And it came. 

Heralded by a peculiar, quaint, little, chatty, sibilant, 
hissing, whistling chuckle, there emerged from a regular 
cave that he, or an ant-bear, or some other burrower 
had constructed under an ancient bush, a beast — a 
most remarkable beast. 

It was long — about three feet. It was low ; it was 
stumpy, clumpy, sturdy, bear-like, and altogether odd. 
It had no ears that any one could find, and it rattled 
the most murderous armament of claws that you ever 
guessed at. But that was not all ; not by any means. 



280 RATEL, V.C. 

It, or, rather, he, had really been colored grayish white 
in the first place ; but Nature had thoughtlessly dropped 
him into a vat of black paint on his " tummy," flat, and 
left him there to swim about, so that by the time he 
got out he was one half, including chin, black, and the 
other and upper half, including top of head and back 
and top of tail, grayish white. And then, for a joke, 
it seemed, Nature had painted a white band round 
where black and grayish white met, a sort of water-line, 
so to speak, and let the poor little beggar go — go, 
mark you, into a wild where self-advertisement is some- 
thing more than unhealthful for the smaller folks. 
Afterwards, however, Nature — who is all a woman — 
had repented, seemingly, and being unable to undo her 
own jest, had given to the little, slow, conspicuous 
beast, as compensation, a courage surpassing the 
courage of any other beast on earth. The result was 
rather curious — it was also the ratel, or honey-badger, 
who had nothing at all to do with rats, but everything 
to do with honey, and was self-evidently more than 
three-parts badger. 

" Kru-tshec ! Kru-tshee-chlk ! Krue-tshee-chlk-chlk, 
whec-tshee-tse-tse, tsc-i-who-o-o ! " lie whistled, and 
chuckled, and muttered, and fairly sang to himself as 
he came trotting along towards the cheeky little bird, 
like a dog that answers a whistle. His gait was all his 
own, as he, too, was all his own original self, being 
unlike anything else, although he bore the stamp of the 
badger people upon him. 

With a calm, rolling trot, head down, tail up, back a 
fraction arched, with something like the slouch of his 
distant relation, the wolverine, he proceeded, preceded 
always by that dusky phantom bird that flitted and 



RATEL, V.C. 281 

perched ahead of him, like a yellow-hammer down a 
country lane — calling, calling, calling. And he, lift- 
ing his odd, flat, " earless," sleek head to it, would 
whistle and chuckle in reply. They had, it seemed, 
arrived at a perfect understanding, these two, during 
the centuries. " Lead on, Macduff ! " he seemed to say. 

They passed antelopes anchored in the shade ; harte- 
beest, impala, and roan after their kind. They heard 
the click of horn and the stamp of hoof, but troubled 
not. They passed the place where a leopard lay asleep 
up a tree, and saw a devil's whip of a ten-foot mamba 
snake — and the bite of that same is a sixty-second 
short cut to the grave — flee before them as if they, 
and not it, were death incarnate. Once a serval cat, 
all legs and ears and agility, stood in their path to 
listen to the funny chuckling, whistling noises, but fled 
when it saw the little, low ratel as if it had seen a ghost. 

But always undeterred by anything in the way, en- 
grossed utterly on the task in view, the dusky bird flew 
ahead, calling the ratel on with its harsh cry ; and al- 
ways the ratel, unhurried and cool, jogged along in its 
wake, answering, and whistling, and chuckling away to 
it, as if convulsed with inward merriment. Perhaps he 
was. It was a strange procession, anyway, and one you 
don't look for every day in the week, even in Africa, 
the land of mysteries and surprises. 

Finally, the bird stopped; and the ratel looked, and 
saw that it was flitting round the base of a big mimosa. 
Enough ! He hurried a little at last. Next moment 
he was nearly hidden under a continuous stream of 
earth and dust flying back from his amazing foreclaws, 
and a w r hirling, whirring vortex of perfectly demented 
bees, whose nest, that had been weeks in the building, 



282 RATEL, V.C. 

was dissolving in seconds under the trowel-like scoop- 
ings of those fearful claws. 

Honey ! Honey ! Honey ! 

That was it. That was the magic word the bird, 
who was a honej'-guide by name, had shouted to the 
ratel, who was a honey-badger, you remember; and 
honey-bees they were that made the air delirious. 

The bird, with the quick eye of a detective, had 
located the hole of the nest, but having no trowel, forth- 
with fetched the ratel, who had, and together they fed., 
the beast on honey, and the bird on the grubs in the 
combs. 

And the bees? Oh, the}' don't count ! At least, they 
might have been house-flies for all the notice the ratel 
took of them, save now and then to bunch a dozen or so 
off his cowled head carelessly. Yet they would prob- 
ably have nearly killed us. 

It was about this time that the bull-gnu appeared, 
tramping steadily towards them; a rugged, rough rene- 
gade of the wilderness ; a ruffian kicked — or, rather, 
horned — out of some herd forever, and, for his sins, 
doomed always to face the risks of life alone, or in the 
companionship of other male outlaws of soured temper 
like himself — almost always male; the female wild 
seems guiltless of law-breaking, or is under a banner of 
protection if it is not. Such " rogues," as men call 
them, are not gentlemanly, as a rule. And, by the way, 
vou know the gnu, of course, alias wildebeest? The 
head of a very shaggy buffalo, the horsy mane, the 
delicate, strong, sloping antelope body, the long, mus- 
tang-like tail, and the strange, twisted, unconventional 
character, half-fierce, half-inquisitive. 

He — that lonely one — was going to drink, and he 



RATEL, V.C. 283 

may have been doing it early because he had only his 
two eyes and ears, and his one nose, to warn him of the 
dozen or two forms of death that awaited him at the 
drinking-place, instead of the eyes and ears and noses 
of all the herd. 

The gnu saw neither honey-bird nor badger till he 
was within a yard of them. Then he stopped as in- 
stantly still as if he had been electrocuted. 

The ratel, who had himself to feed, and a wounded 
wife and two young whom he would lead to that honey- 
feast anon, looked calmly over his shoulder at the form 
of the antelope towering above him. There was no 
sign of fear in his straight stare at the shaggy, 
ferocious-looking horned head. He had no business 
with it, and would thank it to mind its own affairs. 
And the honey-bird didn't care much, either, she having 
no young to feed, because, cuckoo-like, she left other 
birds — woodpeckers, for choice — to see to that. 

Wherefore, for as long as a man would take to select 
a cigarette with care and light it, there was dead silence 
and stillness, broken only by the distant, deep " Hoo- 
hoo, hoo ! hoo-hoo, hoo ! " of a party of ground horn- 
bills. 

Then that devil of meddlesome curiosity which is the 
curse of the wildebeests fell upon that gnu, and sanity 
left him. 

" Kwank ! " neighed he. And again, " Kwank ! " 

Next instant he had spun, top-fashion, on all four 
feet at once, and jumped in the same manner, and was 
gone, whirling round them, with great shaggy head 
down, and in a halo of his own swishing tail, at the rate 
of knots. 

It was nothing to be wondered at in that strange 



284 RATEL, V.C. 

antelope that he should then sink from wild motion to 
absolute, fixed rigidity, broken only by the restless, 
horse-like swishing of the long tail, staring hard at the 
ratel. 

Perhaps it was the bees that did it, or perhaps the 
ratel stood in the gnu's very own path, or in the way of 
his private dusting-hole. I know not; neither did the 
ratel — nor care much, for the matter of that. But 
when the gnu went off again, circling with hoarse snorts, 
and shying and swerving furiously and wonderfully at 
top speed, he sat up on his hindlegs, the better to get a 
view r of the strange sight. Perhaps he thought a lion 
was lying somewhere near that he could not see from his 
lowly, natural position. 

Again the gnu stopped as utterly instantly as if he 
had run into a brick wall, pawed, stamped, snorted, and 
went off once more into furiously insane caperings — a 
new set — all the time circling, with the little, black- 
and-gray, erect figure of the surprised ratel as a pivot. 

And then, in a flash, before any one had a second's 
warning to grasp the truth or prepare, with head down, 
eyes burning in the down-dropped, shaggy head, and 
upcurved horn-points gleaming in the afternoon sun, he 
charged, hurling himself, a living, reckless, furious 
battering-ram, straight at the little ratel. 

Did that ratel quit quick? Do ratels ever quit an 
unbeaten foe? I don't know. They may, once in the 
proverbial blue moon ; but I haven't seen 'em. This 
one didn't. He seemed to know that it is held to be a 
sound military maxim to meet an attack by counter- 
attack, and he did, though he had only the fifth of a 
second to do it in. Ah, but it was good to see that 
odd little beast trotting out coolly, head low, tail high, 



RATEL, V.C. 285 

singing his war-song as he rolled along to meet the 
charging foe so many, many times his own size. 

Next moment there was a thud — somewhat as if 
some one had punched a pillow — and the ratel was 
flying through the air, high and fine, in a graceful and 
generous curve. A thorn-bush — what matter the pre- 
cise name? there are so many in those parts, all 
execrable — acknowledged receipt of his carcass with a 
crash, and for a few seconds he hung, like a sack on a 
nail, spitted cleanly by at least one thorn, far thornier 
than anything we know here, before the thing gave way, 
and he fell, still limply, this way and that, hesitatingly, 
as it were, as each point lovingly sought to retain him, 
to a fork near the bottom, where he stayed. 

At last he picked himself out of the fork, and — oh 
my ! — with a whistling grunt of rage, coolly, calmly, 
clumsily if you like, but grandly all the same, trotted 
forth into the open to look for that bull-gnu again. 
And that, sirs, was the sort of animal he was. 

The bull-gnu, however, who was not previously ac- 
quainted with small beasts that would face his charge 

— and an aerial journey, and the thorns — and come 
back for more, had fetched a curve at full gallop, and 
loped off into the landscape. For the first time since 
the herds outlawed him, I fancy, he seemed to be quite 
pleased with himself, and soon, antelope-like, put the 
ratel from him placidly, and forgot. But he was 
reckoning without his host. If he had done with the 
ratel, the ratel had not done with him. No, by thunder 

— not by a good bit ! 

Finding no bull-gnu, the slow little black and 
grayish-white fighter from Fightersville returned at a 
walk, still whistling with rage, to the unearthed bees'- 



286 RATEL, V.C. 

nest, which looked like a town after a bad air-raid. 
And the first thing he did was to patter almost on top 
of a cobra, a five-footer, who, having narrowly escaped 
death by the gnu's flying hoofs, was what one might call 
considerably " het " up, or " off the handle," so to say. 

The servant of the Devil sat up, blew out its beastly 
hood, and shot forth a hiss that seemed to run all up 
and down one's spine, like lightning on an elm-tree. 

The robber of honey sat up, said " Tchlk ! " and 
turned a somersault. What's that? Yes, somersault 
is right. 

Followed instantly two thin jets of liquid, as much as 
anything I can think of like those lines called " tra- 
jectory curves " which ballisticians do so love to draw 
in books on rifle-shooting; only, these curved lines 
began at the hollow point of Mr. Cobra's poison-fangs, 
and were meant to end in Mr. Ratel's eyes. They 
didn't. Old man ratel, he was standing on his hind- 
legs, with his sturdy paws in front of his eyes — like a 
man who looks across a sunny land — and seemed just 
about to turn a somersault again. He changed his 
mind, though, when the poison, that would have blinded 
him for life — and that life wouldn't have been long in 
that wild then, I want to tell you — stopped, and he 
went in at that black-necked, legless, soulless servant 
of Satan, utterly and amazingly unafraid. It was fine. 

Oh, by the way, I forgot to tell you that when Nature 
repented, and gave the ratel a courage surpassing the 
courage of any other beast on earth, she also gave him 
a skin tough as a pachyderm's, and loose, as if it were 
two sizes too large ; and that is why that black-necked 
cobra died quite quickly, and the ratel didn't, even 
slowly. Even if the snake's fangs had got through, 



RATEL, V.C. 287 

which was not in the least likely, that did not mean to 
say they would touch Mr. Ratel's person inside. This, 
by the way, may explain why being spitted on thorns, 
like a beetle on a pin, when the bull-gnu charged, did not 
seem to worry him much, either. 

The moon was up when the wounded mother ratel, on 
guard at the mouth of her burrow, looked up sharply. 
A side-striped jackal, who kidded himself she had not 
seen him lying in wait to find out, when she went hunt- 
ing, what she hid in that den, suddenly bolted with a 
yap ; and a hyena, represented by two burning eyes, 
who appeared, by some magic of his own, to guess she 
was wounded, jumped up and made way for something 
that approached. It was her husband and the cobra, 
the latter trailing along limply behind, who came that 
way ; and even the hyena had retired, with an audible 
sigh — at least, it wasn't a moan quite — when he 
claimed the path. After all, there is no sense, if you 
are the most cowardly beast for your power on earth, 
in getting up against the pluckiest thing in creation in 
full possession of life and liberty. 

Later our ratel sallied forth to " face the world " 
again. His wife had recovered from her wounds — 
the result, these, of refusing to believe she was not so 
good as a twelve-foot python, and a bit better — suffi- 
ciently to walk slowly; but that was not enough to face 
that wild where die-quicks, from lions, down through 
leopards, hyenas, wild-dogs, jackals, and the rest, are 
forever hiding, on the lookout for unfortunate ones fly- 
ing an S.O.S. signal. No, he must go and do the 
provisioning alone, and alone he went. 

For a peaceful beast, one only too pleased to mind 
his own business and thank other folks to mind theirs, 



288 RATEL, V.C. 

his subsequent doings were rather astonishing. This 
was because he cared for neither man nor beast nor 
devil, in the first place, and because the night produced 
all three, in the second. 

He got man in the form of the smell of meat — 
well-seasoned meat, even for Africa ! — what time he 
was testing a native village, by scent and on the down- 
wind side of him — and that showed his pluck, my word ! 
— for honey or fowl. He detected neither out of the 
few dozen unspeakable stenches, but struck meat, and 
following it up-wind, arrived at a piece — a good big 
piece — on the ground among grass. 

A civet cat — who is more civet than cat, by the 
way — a small spotted genet — who looked like an 
exaggerated ferret in the uncertain gloom — and the 
inevitable black-backed jackal — who must not be con- 
fused with him of the side-stripes — faded out at his 
approach like steam in a dry atmosphere. He might 
have felt proud of this silent respect, if it were not a 
fact that these gentry, these village frontier haunters, 
scenting danger, thought it a fine " kink " to let the 
brave one test it first. 

And he did. 

To be exact, that ratel touched off the tooth-jawed 
trap that was the reason for that free meal of high and 
valuable meat in that place, and when he jumped 
he didn't get anywhere. Also, it hurt his leg abom- 
inably. 

Then the others reincarnated themselves out of the 
shadows — especially the jackal, who shouted " Yaaaa- 
} T a-ya-ya ! " and called a friend — and waited for things 
to happen. They were confident things would happen, 
for Africa is not a good place wherein to get caught in 



RATEL, V.C. 289 

a trap — there is too much likelihood of being mistaken 
for the bait! 

But they might as well have seen a thunder " por- 
tent " captured by the tail as this ratel by the leg; for, 
instead of instantly and foolishly abandoning himself 
to the frenzy of unthinkable fear — the fear of being 
trapped is the greatest of all to a free, wild thing — as 
practically all others would have done, he said nothing 
at all ; he failed to lose his head ; and, to crown all, he 
instantly, coolly, slowly, viciously, and doggedly set 
himself to struggle, with a grim persistence that was 
amazing. And, moreover, from that instant he never 
left off. 

A striped hyena, seemingly in lifelong terror of his 
own shadow, turned up by magic — or perhaps he heard 
the snap of the trap. Seven times he bolted, for no 
earthly reason that one could see, before finally gaining 
courage to snap at the ratel at the very end of his 
reach. It was the kind of snap that would take half a 
man's face away, and not nice to meet when you are 
trapped. The ratel, however, came calmly at the 
hyena, trap and all, and so nearly got his own trap- 
jaws locked home on the unclean one that the hyena 
was glad to go away. 

In the end, thanks to the amazing toughness of his 
skin, and its looseness, the ratel managed to, as it were, 
slide the bone of his leg between the jaws of the trap, 
leaving the skin and fur in, and the rest was mainly de- 
termined tugging and strong fang-work. 

Then he coolly ate the real bait, and — the onlookers 
remembered appointments elsewhere. None of them, it 
seemed, was tickled to meet the ratel when he had 
finished. He was sure to be crusty; and, anyway, he 



290 RATEL, V.C. 

had bitterly disappointed them all — he had achieved 
the apparently impossible, and, worst part of the lot, 
was not dead. 

Now, a ratel will do almost as much for honey as a 
bear for pork, a leopard for little " bow-wows," or a 
man for diamonds. This will explain why he was 
foolish enough to follow, some hours later, the trail of 
some natives who had been out collecting honey from a 
camp the day before ; or perhaps he knew nothing about 
the honey till, not too scientifically, he got into the 
camp. Anyway, the honey was very good. 

There are, however, from a wilding's point of view, 
camps and camps. Most of the inhabitants of the wild, 
including the lion, who are not born with a pluck con- 
siderably above proof, can discriminate the difference. 
The ratel either could not or would not. 

Then the knowledge was driven home. Driven home 
in the shape of a big, loose-limbed, decp-jowled brute of 
a dog, as unlike the ordinary native curs as it well could 
be. It did not come silently, or suddenly, for it growled 
full warning in a terrible bass ; but the ratel showed 
contempt, and teeth that glistened beautifully in the red 
light of the dying fire the sleeping sentry ought to 
have seen to, but had not. Moreover, it did not come 
alone, for the camp was a white hunter's camp. The 
dog gave a thunderous baying rally-call, and almost 
before that sentry had leapt to his feet, the ratel van- 
ished tumultuously and suddenly from the public gaze, 
under a perfect cloud of dogs. He was, ere any one 
knew what the riot might be, literally smothered under 
dogs — dogs, too, most of 'em who held up the deadly 
leopard, and hounded the tyrannical lion, habitually 
and for a pastime, mark you. 



RATEL, V.C. 291 

Then his devil prompted one of the black sentries to 
rush up and fire his rifle. Probably he did not know 
what was under those dogs ; certainly he thought it 
would keep there. In any case, he nearly killed a dog, 
and the cause of the trouble did not keep there. He 
came out, miraculously alive, still more miraculously 
cool and unhurried. He broke away from the dogs as 
if they were little puppies, and, still quite coolly and 
slowly, he charged that man. 

The yell that followed could have been heard quite a 
long distance through the cloaked night. And, in 
truth, one cannot wonder, for }^ou may take it from 
me that the jaws of a ratel fast home on the calf of your 
leg, as our ratel's jaws were on that native's leg, form 
something to remember in dreams. 

But it was that very native who saved our ratel's life, 
all the same; for his gymnastic display during the few 
seconds that followed was so energetic that the pink 
pyjamas and a revolver, thkt represented the white 
hunter fresh from sleep, had no chance at all of doing 
any damage except to the dancing native — which they 
nearly did; and the dogs, once more piling themselves 
on to the ratel, broke his hold, and the whole fight 
rolled and raged away into the darkness and the thorn- 
scrub, out of sight. 

Later, one by one, those dogs came back, dead-beat 
most of them, with tongues lolling and sides pumping. 
Some limped, and some turned away every few yards 
feverishly to lick a wound. All were blood-stained, but 
not a drop of it — not one drop — belonged to friend 
ratel. He, that superb warrior, was at that moment 
trotting along, quite unconcernedly, through the bush 
about a quarter of a mile away. There was blood upon 



2Q2 RATEL, V.C. 

him, too — not his, the dogs' — and no other mark ; 
and though he was pretty sore and sick from internal 
bruising, his skin, his wonderful loose skin, was whole, 
and unpicrced by a single fang. He had, however, the 
decency to go home and fling himself into a stupor-like 
sleep, just to prove that he was a real, live beast of 
this earth, and not merely a phantom from other worlds. 

The next afternoon was closing in dull and cloudy, 
and there were signs of a dark and bad night to come 
— just the sort of day wild hunters come out early in. 
This was why the grunt sounded then that heralded the 
appearance of our ratel above-ground, and he himself 
appeared, emerging at his very own slow trot from his 
hole. For a moment he paused, looking round, with 
his funny, " earless," flat head in the air, as if he ex- 
pected, or listened for, the honey-guide ; but the honey- 
guide was half a mile away, leading some natives — 
who, by the way, were endeavoring to copy the crooning, 
whistling replies of a ratel — to hone} 7 . 

No honey-guide? Then he must go and search for 
himself. And he did, returning, in fifty minutes, for 
his wife, who, now much recovered — as only a ratel can 
recover from the very jaws of death — followed him 
with her } T oung to the hole he had torn in a rotten tree- 
trunk where the bees were nesting. 

They had proceeded perhaps three hundred yards, 
when, turning a bush carelessly, as no other creature 
would dare to do, the ratel fell almost on to the back 
of the bull-gnu. 

There is no need to be surprised that they should 
meet. The wild is not an aimless mix-up in that way. 
Each creature has its beat, temporarily or permanently, 
nor seeks to deviate. You may look for the same herd 



RATEL, V.C. 293 

of antelope, feeding near the same place, about the same 
hour each day ; the same lion stumping the same beat, 
as regular as a policeman, most nights ; the same hyena 
uttering horrible nothings within hearing of the same 
hills, any time after the setting of each sun, just as 
surely as the same cock-robin asks you for crumbs, the 
same blackbird awakens you with inimitable fluting, and 
the same black cat seeks for both in the same vicinity 
each dusk. 

The surprise was in what followed. Perhaps the bull- 
gnu kicked our ratel badly as he lurched to his feet, 
jerked from half-sleep into violent collision with he knew 
not what. Perhaps the ratel had a memory. Perhaps 
the presence of his family weighed with him. Whatever 
the cause, the result was decided enough. He reared 
and bit deep, and fixed home a very living vise, where 
he bit. 

Then things happened, but that which immediately 
followed was not a fight ; it was not even a spar. The 
ratel never moved, although he was moved — astound- 
ingly. The gnu bull did the moving, and produced the 
most amazing bit of violent activity one could dream of. 
It was quite indescribable. A buck- jumping mustang 
of the most hustling kind would have been as a gentle 
lamb to it. The ground all about looked as if herds 
had jumped upon it — bushes, grass, flowers, and all 
were trampled down flat. But it did not do what it 
was designed to do — it did not break the ratel's hold. 
Bruised, assuredly, shaken so that he ought to have 
fallen to bits, dizzy and blind, he did not let go, and 
in the position he held he could not be hammered off. 
He just glued where he was, saying nothing at all, till 
the end — till that grand old bull sank and was still, 



2Q4 RATEL, V.C. 

exhausted, by loss of blood, and with one great hopeless 
sigh his life departed from him, and he died. 

The ratel did not leave go for some little time. He 
seemed to suspect that the gnu bull was bluffing, or 
perhaps he was himself half-stunned. 

It was the sudden and peculiar growling hiss from his 
wife — sounding all a-magnified in that wilderness 
silence after the battle — that made him look up, at 
her first, and then almost instantly at something else. 
His wife was backing slowly towards the " bush," every 
hair on her body sticking straight out at right angles, 
her eyes fixed strangely upon that something else. His 
young had taken to cover, not, it seemed, too readily, 
but by their parent's order. 

A lion was standing, still as a carved beast, at the far 
end of that little clearing — he was the something else. 
Goodness and his kingly self alone knew how long he 
had been there, that great, heavy-jow T led, deep-bellied, 
haughty-eyed brute. He ma} T have been present from 
the first, or the middle, or only at that moment. Being 
a lion, he was just there, suddenly, without any visible 
effect of having got there, a presence of dread, created 
apparently out of thin air at the moment, in that spot, 
and with less sound than a blown leaf. 

This power of being, without seeming to come, of 
evolving from nowhere, is one of the lion's most highly 
perfected tricks ; for King Leo believes in all the ritual 
of his craft, and is great on effects, even down to the 
minor details. Power, grim and terrible, he has, with- 
out shadow of doubt; but he never forgets to impress 
that fact — and more — upon the world, and every 
ar^ion is carefully studied to advertise, not himself, but 



RATEL, V.C. 295 

his " frightfulness." A very fine play-actor is the king 
of all the beasts. 

But the ratel did not move. He had met his Napo- 
leon, and was not — so far as the watcher could see — 
afraid. 

Motionless, scowling, with head down, and shrewd, 
proud e} T es smoldering, the lion stood there like an 
apparition of doom. He was, I fully suspect, letting 
the effect sink in deliberately. He knew his game. 
Also, he had a reason. Surely a great poker-player 
was lost in the lion. 

But the little ratel met that regal stare squarely and 
unmoved. He whose proud boast it was that he feared 
nothing that walked or crawled, or swam or flew, could 
not be frightened now. And he who came to terrify 
was perhaps all but ten feet long, and he whom he 
sought to terrify was barely three feet. It was a com- 
parison to make you gasp. 

Now, that lion did not want the ratel at all, or his 
wife, or his family, or anything that was his. He 
wanted the gnu, and would be very pleased if the ratel 
would go aw r ay and leave it to him. 

The ratel, moreover, did not want the gnu, being an 
eater of honey, locusts, and generally badger-like fare 
for the most part ; and if the lion had only had the 
sense to wait a few minutes longer behind the scenes, 
the ratel would have gone away and left the gnu. But 
he would not be driven ; that was the rub. Attacking 
nobody unprovoked, he was a grim beast to attack, and 
gave way before none. Hence the trouble. 

Finding that the bluff of the impressive tableau did 
not work, the lion tried a fresh one. Still staring at the 



296 RATEL, V.C. 

ratel, he sank his head to the ground, so that his great 
mane hung to the earth all about him. His forelegs and 
his shoulders crouched, but his hindlegs and his back 
were held at their highest, and his tail began to lash 
behind. Then he began to growl tremendously and 
nerve-shatteringly, and as he did so he curled his upper 
lips up and back, till the whole ghastly array of his 
teeth was laid bare to view. In this position he looked 
like a gigantic grinning mask, with blind eye-sockets 
where the wrinkles were on the sloping forehead, his eyes 
nearly invisible below, and a tail lashing far up atop. 
It was a horrible sight, and one calculated to stampede 
the pluckiest animal. 

It was, of course, also a deliberate piece of mesmeric 
bluff, the reason for which was not made clear till one 
noticed, what the ratel probably could not, that the 
great leonine tusks, the terrible fangs, were yellow and 
worn, as were the rest of the teeth. This was an old 
lion, a king on a throne already tottering, a monarch 
of yesterday. 

That lion, however, might have turned into Satan 
himself, for all the ratel cared. He was threatened, 
attacked, bullied, forced. His blood was up, and had 
not all who ever fought him allowed that he was the 
pluckiest beast on earth? Enough! Come lion! come 
devil ! he would give ground to none. 

Lions are not too patient. Also, they have fine 
spirit of their own. They are among the very few 
beasts who will hunt and attack animals as strong as, 
or stronger than, themselves. And this lion's patience 
snapped suddenly. All at once he seemed to remember 
that he was still a king, though a king already within 
the shadow of abdication. The terrible hr--< rumble of 



RATEL, V.C. 297 

his growl grew, and changed tone ; his tail lashed faster 
and faster; and then, all suddenly heralded by a couple 
of wicked, rasping, coughing grunts, he — charged. 

The ratel moved to meet him — to meet him — and at 
a cool jog-trot ! 

What happened then was hard to follow. It looked 
as if the worn fangs of the lion failed to make his hold 
on the wonderful, leathern, loose armor of the little 
honey-badger, and that he bungled the stroke of his 
terrible paw. Be that as it may, the honey-badger 
certainly went straight in, right under the lion's guard, 
right under the lion, and rearing, he bit home, and hung 
like a living spanner. 

And here, perhaps, it is best to draw a curtain. For 
one reason, I cannot describe it, and frankly confess 
the fact. For several other reasons, it is best not to 
try. The ratel died in about ten minutes, crushed, bat- 
tered, smashed to death ; but the chaos lasted longer 
than that, because, even after death, he was not done 
with — the passing of life had locked his amazing jaws 
shut forever, and they were shut on the lion. 

The end found the little ratel lying crumpled up and 
crimson on the trampled grass, and the lion running 
about like some great injured dog, squatting down every 
few seconds to lick furiously at his wound. Fear was 
in the eyes of the king of beasts, for the first, probably, 
and certainly for the last, time in his life, and his blood 
reddened the grass wherever he made his way ; but the 
internal hemorrhage was the worst. 

Then the vultures came, and that, my friends, is a 
signal for us humans to go. The vultures get the last 
word always, even in a story, and the name of that word 

is — FINIS. 



XVIII 
THE DAY 

Now, if you wore a helmet and neck armor of purple, 
green, and blue in metallic reflections, with scarlet cheek 
and e} r e pieces ; if your uniform were of purple, brown, 
yellow, orange-red, green, and black, " either positive 
or reflected," with a long, rakish, dashing rapier- 
scabbard cocked jauntily out behind, wouldn't you feel 
proud? So did he; pride and the "grand air" were 
written all over him. True, though, the rapier-scab- 
bard was not a rapier-scabbard exactly — only a tail ; 
but it looked like one, in a way. His full title was 
Phasianus colchicus, but ordinary people called him 
just plain pheasant for short. 

You would have thought, after all this, that even in 
the first pale light of a cold dawn he would have been 
easy to see. As a matter of fact, Gaiters, the head 
gamekeeper, one of his underlings, three dogs, and a 
gun passed right under his bed without seeing him. 
Rather, they may have unconsciously seen him, and 
put him down as a bundle of dead twigs and leaves 
caught up in a branch. This is not very complimen- 
t.irv, perhaps, to a gentleman attired in a gorgeous 
uniform as heretofore set out, but true; and lucky for 
him, too, to have at once a uniform of unquestioned 
splendor and one which would melt into its surround- 
ings. 

They, the men, did not see him ; but he, the old cock- 
pheasant, saw them right enough. He opened one eye, 

298 



THE DAY 299 

and stared at them through that. Then he opened the 
other eye, and stared at them through that. Neither 
stare seemed to please him. 

It was not Gaiters's way to march through the wood 
at that hour in the morning. What meant this un- 
seemly disturbance of Phasianus's domain? His sus- 
picions, never long at rest, woke up. Moreover, some- 
where at the back of his brain rose a memory, a little, 
tiny speck of a memory, which grew. 

Then he stood right up. 

Everywhere, here and there, in the gray cloak of the 
dawn-mist, he could hear the sharp " Chawk-chawk ! " 
and the quick, flustered whir as pheasant after pheasant 
came down from its roosting-perch to clean and break- 
fast. But his supicions held him for a few minutes 
longer, stretching his neck and peering about at the 
still-shrouded mystery of the ground below ; and it was 
as well, perhaps. 

Suddenly his head was still ; a spray of a brier-bush 
was swaying gently. There was nothing in that, of 
course, if there had been any breath of wind to move it ; 
but there wasn't. Wherefore our gallant friend did 
not come down to preen and breakfast like the rest, but 
sat motionless as a statue, while the sun rose and 
touched him to a winking golden and bronze wonder, 
and the mists began to be torn asunder. He wanted 
to know what moved that brier-branch, and he wasn't 
taking chances till he did. 

Day came on apace, and all the night hunters who 
had remained so late had already hurried off to bed 
save one. He appeared, evidently empty, certainly 
very angry indeed at having waited for a cock-pheasant 
who refused to do what he was supposed to do and 
come down to breakfast. Out of the brier-bush he 



300 THE DAY 

came, a lean dog-fox, snarling horribly up at the 
pheasant, who calmly returned the gaze, conscious of 
his safety, of course, and said " Chuck it ! " in a loud, 
harsh voice, and quite distinctly, twice. 

The fox, knowing it was no good to wait any longer 
in the daylight, went, like a floating red shadow. The 
pheasant watched him go, but did not move for some 
time. Foxes had been known to come back again more 
suddenly than they went. 

At last he flew to the earth, but even then he did so 
as silently as his noisy wings w r ould let him ; and he did 
not announce the fact with a half-crow, as the others 
had done. Very circumspectly he slipped off through 
the undergrowth, by a series of little crouching runs, 
stopping every now and then to freeze and listen. 

Soon he came to one of those open, beautiful, grass- 
covered " rides " with which keepers intersect pheasant- 
coverts. He stopped dead on the edge of it, himself 
invisible among the drooping, leaning, old-gold bracken. 
The " ride " was full of wood-people, for here had been 
scattered that corn which Gaiters intended the pheasants 
to feed upon. Indeed, there were about ten pheasants, 
hens and young cocks of the year, doing exactly what 
they were intended to do. Also, there were some half- 
dozen softly-tinged, blue-gray w T ood-pigeons, and one 
cheeky jay — whose wing-patches rivaled the perfec- 
tion of the blue sky above — doing their best in a quiet 
sort of way to help the pheasants, which they were not 
intended to do, by any manner of means. 

The old cock-pheasant slid across the " ride " after a 
bit, low as a crouching rat. He had no business there 
this day. His mind was still alert with suspicion. 
Moreover, his father had been a cunning old cock who 
had managed, by ways that were dark, to keep out of 



THE DAY 301 

the game-bag for years, too. The taint, as Gaiters 
would have called it, had been passed on to him. 

He made for the open edge of the covert, and he was 
mighty careful about doing that even. He felt that 
air and plenty of horizon were necessary to his well- 
being, after the disturbing vision of Gaiters and Co., so 
unnaturally busy? hurrying through the dawn. 

Now, it is quite remarkable how much you can see 
from the edge of a pheasant-covert without being seen 
yourself. Keepers know that, but do not give the fact 
away. The ground sloped away in two open grass 
fields, a hedge dividing them, and it was within about 
the longitude and the latitude of where that hedge met 
the covert that our old friend maneuvered. 

The climate about there seemed to suit him admirably. 
True, good food was not strewn in plenty just where 
he could most easily see it. He had to look for his 
acorns or his beechmast by the good old domestic-fowl 
plan of scratching among the leaves ; roots also he was 
forced to scratch for ; and the noisy mistle-thrushes 
with the tempers of Eblis had to be driven off the berries 
he would look after in the ditch. 

Also, there was a stoat. That stoat, however, 
tackled him just once. In the process it discovered 
(a) that he wore spurs not meant to be ornaments, 
and (b) that no one could teach him much about using 
those same spurs. The stoat, plus a new carmine deco- 
ration for gallantry, remembered an urgent appoint- 
ment down a rat-hole, and kept it. Perhaps it was a 
young stoat, and had not learnt that there are at least 
four degrees of cock-pheasant, namely, young and 
brainless, adult and brave, old and brave and cunning, 
and old and decrepit ; but the last stage is a rare bird. 
There is nothing of any use to the stoat in the second 



302 THE DAY 

and third degrees of cock-pheasant — no health to the 
stoat, you understand. 

The dawning of the morning had passed by now in 
gold and crimson and purple splendor ; the mist-curtain 
had been drawn back by the fingers of the wind, the 
utter darkness upon everything at ground-level had 
begun to give way before the sun, and to leeward of 
most trees and bushes there was a balmy luxuriance of 
golden light that held one lingering. 

Gnats were dancing under the low-hung boughs in 
still corners, as they will dance on the coldest day ; 
song-thrushes were beginning to take life for one more 
day, and tack hither and yon, as if they were busy 
pegging the field down with an invisible " cats' cradle " ; 
and the black rooks, shining like burnished steel shields, 
flashed and flashed again as they began to gather be- 
neath the trees, w T here the ground thawed most and first. 
Though they alone seemed to have discovered it, the 
pigeons very quickly found that the rooks had hit some- 
thing good, and you can bet one jay, at any rate, must 
be there, to make profit out of somebody. 

It was the jester of a jay, whom, in spite of his 
painted plumage, no one seemed to have noticed, that 
first gave the alarm that carried the cock-pheasant's 
suspicious temperament a step farther upon the path 
of independent action. Up till then you will note that, 
though he had left the vicinity of his own people, he had 
not 3 T et left the realm that was peculiarly their own — 
the woods. 

" W-a— r-k, w-a-a-r-k!" gasped out the jay sud- 
denly, and fled, a half-seen vision of pinkish, of black 
and white, upon uncertain, almost fluttering, wings. 

It was like striking a gong. Instantly all motion 
was suspended, and dotted thrushes, clustered rooks. 



THE DAY 303 

and deprecating pigeons remained at rigid attention. 
The old coek-pheasant, too, erect as an armored war- 
rior, unseen just within the covert, stood promptly at 
gaze. 

Then, in no more time than one would take to inhale 
one puff from a cigarette, the fields were empty — stark, 
cold, and deserted in the eye of the morning sun. The 
birds had not so much gone, exactly, as simply faded 
out — dissolved, as a picture may at a cinema-show. 
The cock-pheasant did not go. He was in cover, and 
had a good view, a strategic position of some moment. 

Followed a pause. Then a man in tweeds entered 
one of the fields by the gate. Followed him two more, 
then a fourth, then two not in tweeds, then dogs, black 
and big, to the number of three, not to mention the 
bar-like gleam given off by the barrels of the guns that 
the first four carried. The whole procession passed 
silently, as they thought — but to the waiting, watch- 
ing, wild-folk unpardonably noisily — diagonally across 
the field, and out of sight round a bend of the wood. 
They had an air about them. I don't know what it was 
exactly, but } y ou could feel they were going to do some- 
thing serious that had not been done there for a long 
time. Perhaps the old cock-pheasant felt it too, but — 
well, there now! Where had the old " varmint " gone? 
Half-way down the hedge, very low and long, the 
cock-pheasant was sneaking. He seemed suddenly 
anxious to mind his own business, and that everybody 
else should mind theirs. He was going away from the 
wood, which the books tell us is the realm, the sanctuary, 
the all, to a pheasant, and he had no desire to answer 
questions by the way. For this reason, then, and a few 
others, he felt no special delight in sighting, about two 
hundred yards farther on — at a place where two stacks 



304 THE DAY 

surrounded by rails stood and sheltered a fowlhouse — 
a baker's dozen of fowls sunning themselves on the 
hedge-bank. He held for fowls all the wild creatures' 
contempt for the tame or domestic. All the same, he 
saw no health in risking the open just then, and would 
not turn back, so there was nothing for it but the fowls. 

Low as low he crouched, and ran very quickty, and 
hoped for the best; and there is no bird that can wish 
itself out of sight in this fashion better than friend 
pheasant. But he forgot the odd cockerel out. He 
shot right on to the wretched thing — a gawky red 
youth — messing about all alone in a nettle-clump, and 
it dashed into the field, racing on long yellow legs, and 
squawking fit to wake the dead. 

Down clapped the pheasant as if the noise had pierced 
his heart, and remained stiller than the crawling roots 
around him, and not half so easy to see. But it was 
no good. Up shot the dozen heads above the herbage, 
and two dozen vacuous eyes regarded his vicinity with 
empty-headed inquisitiveness. 

He almost melted into the ground, but it was useless. 
An old, old hen — who perhaps was ignored by the lord 
of the harem, and hoped for an adventure — waddled 
up, stood within a yard of his crouched, rounded shape 
without seeing him, saw him, shot straight up in the 
air at least one foot, screaming for help, and promptly 
charged blindly into the hedge, where she as promptly 
got held up among roots and twigs. 

The old pheasant got to his feet just as the rooster 
who owned the outfit came racing up, panting and red. 
He had heard a wife scream for help. Perhaps it was 
the odd bird out ; or, anyway, some one who had to be 
abolished. And he never waited to think. He saw 
what might have been a small cockerel (if it had been 



THE DAY 305 

large he might have thought twice) crouching, and — 
he just sailed right in. 

Then something happened. The two met, going up 
breast to breast. For a moment or two the cock- 
pheasant showed on or about that big rooster. Some 
feathers hung in the air. The rooster sat on his heels, 
met by a blow in the chest that seemed to take all the 
wind from his sails, so to speak, and would have drawn 
off to reconsider things if he had not promptly become 
more busy than ever before in his life. 

It was over ere any one knew quite what was hap- 
pening. The old cock-pheasant had passed through 
the crowd and vanished at the double down the hedge, 
and the big rooster was slowly subsiding into a pool of 
his own blood, from which he was destined never to rise 
again. 

But those who make, instead of following, their own 
destiny do not get let off thus lightly in the wild. The 
pheasant had not gone a hundred yards, when a most 
intolerable blast, an almost unbearable blast, of shrill, 
nerve-racking noise throbbed through his head. The 
bird fell in his tracks where he ran, as if some one had 
jerked his legs from under him, and he peered out. 

What he beheld was an under-keeper standing close 
by and blowing upon a two-note pea-whistle till there 
seemed some danger that he would burst his cheeks, 
or a blood-vessel, on the spot, and far up the field three 
wandering pheasants racing back to the covert, as they 
thought, for very life ; but, as a matter of fact — and 
you shall see — it was to very death. The blower of 
whistles was stationed there to drive back into the 
covert any pheasants who were so misguided as to wish 
to roam thence into the fields and away. 

Now, that old reprobate of a pheasant of ours was a 



306 THE DAY 

pretty confirmed runner, anyway. He had trained him- 
self to it. Yet never in all his checkered life was he 
conscious of a more awful desire to flee by means of the 
wings that God had given him. The weakness was over 
in a few seconds, and he crept on; but it was a near 
thing while it lasted. He passed, however, away from 
the danger zone, resisting temptation, and it was as 
well. 

As he went there burst forth, at the opposite end of 
the big covert to that at which he had come out, a 
sudden, quick shot. It echoed away and away back 
among the woods, clattering and banging like great 
doors shutting. The old cock-pheasant stopped to 
listen ; he cocked his green head on one side ; he stood 
with one foot daintily uplifted; and in the same instant 
there burst, upon the air a rending, crashing succession 
of shots, worse than ragged volley-firing, which almost 
made him jump. It had begun — the big shoot over 
his covert, the largest, the best, the richest in pheasants, 
which had been saved for this — " the day " had begun. 
When it ended very few pheasants would be left alive, 
for word had gone forth that it was to be thinned down, 
almost shot out, and that not a cock must escape. 

He, our own cock-pheasant, might have chuckled — 
as a cock-pheasant can, and will, very low and softly to 
himself, if you are close enough to hear him — if some- 
thing had not very suddenly and very mysteriously said 
"phtt!" just like that, close beside him. The old 
bird's head snicked round, right round, almost hindpart 
before ; but he made no other movement. The sound 
was new to him, and of a strangely sinister import. 
Also, there was a little splayed hole in the ground, as 
if a walking-stick had been poked in there, close beside 
him, which had not been there before. 



THE DAY 307 

He was still staring when something, singing a little, 
high-pitched song in a minor key to itself, came romp- 
ing through the silent air, and, with an oddly emphasized 
and emphatic " phtt ! " landed between his feet. It 
bored a hole just like the first thing, and it spat dirt 
up into his face. 

The third mystery thing clipped three feathers from 
his back as he ran, bolted for dear life, crouching low 
— even then he would not rise — for the hedge. He 
got there alive, if not quite whole ; while a fourth name- 
less object cut twigs off above him. Then he kept on 
running, always hugging the hedges, till he was two 
fields away. He was upset and overstrained, for Fate 
had given him plenty of deaths to circumvent as it was, 
in the ordinary course of business, and this addition 
was a bit too much. 

There are other forms of shooting pheasants than the 
orthodox one, which begins with smoking a cigarette on 
a comfortable shooting-seat, and ends with a wild and 
furious fusillade, using three guns as fast as you can. 
So thought the farmer's son, who took the chance to 
test his new American .22-bore repeating-rifle, now 
that all the keepers were well out of the way. And he 
had come mighty close to bagging the old cock-bird, 
too. " A»s near as made no odds," he said, which was 
true, but only the old bird himself knew quite the 
closeness of the call. 

In the far field the bronze king of the woods found 
peace for a bit. The stunning reports in the covert 
not far away, and the thought that his companions of 
yesterday, his lady-loves of last spring, were even then 
being butchered by the hundred, made no difference to 
his digestion. He fed on with that imperturbability 
that must have come to him straight through his 



308 THE DAY 

ancestors from the East — Kismet ! It was sufficient. 

He ought, of course, to have been in the covert. He 
was, however, here — knowingly here, cunningly here, 
safely — No, by Jove ! Not that, by any means. 

A head, clean and neat and sharp, had poked out of 
the long, pale grass at the edge of the hedge-ditch, and 
stared at him. He couldn't very well miss seeing it 
because of the unforgettable brightness of its beady 
eyes, and the absolutely spotless purity of its white 
shirt-front. Besides, he knew the owner — and its 
reputation. 

He was helping the farmer to clear an oat-stubble of 
charlock-seeds at the moment, and bending down. That 
is to say, he was doing inestimable good, for which he 
got no credit. The next moment, and the next, and 
for many more, he was still bending down. In fact, 
from the instant he got sight of that head, it was as if 
a Hand had come down and turned him by magic into 
a big model of a bird cast in bronze. All life in him 
appeared to have dried up and fled. He looked as if 
you could have picked him up and put him upon a 
bracket in your drawing-room without his ever moving 
again. But that was only because of the head he had 
seen — and its reputation. Moreover, the head was 
not alone. At least, it had multiplied itself half-a- 
dozen times in less than half-a-dozen seconds, and even 
a stoat, which the head belonged to, cannot be in two 
places at once — though for sheer quickness of move- 
ment it, and far more its cousin the weasel, comes very 
near to it. 

Just at this moment it seemed that about the most 
unhealthful thing he could do would be to be seen in the 
air. Wherefore did this innocent and guileless old bird 
affect not to see the stoats, but made out that he was 



THE DAY 309 

feeding his way along, quite and absolutely intent upon 
that yellow devil of a weed whose other name is char- 
lock. He did not even hurry, and each deliberate step 
was taken with almost a proud daintiness. The only 
thing was, he never lifted his head ; he was almost too 
obviously unwary — for him. And he gave the im- 
pression that every step would be his last out into the 
field; that he was always going to turn back next in- 
stant or the next, as he had done before when the stoats 
were not there. 

On and on he kept till he had crossed the field, going 
faster and faster, till he ended at the far hedge with a 
run. And there, so far as he was concerned, was an 
end of the stoats. He put them aside. He forgot all 
about them. 

They, however, had not forgotten about him. 

It was half-an-hour later, and he was patiently glean- 
ing such food as the rooks and the sparrows and the 
larks had left behind them, when something, he could 
not tell what, caused him to straighten up, with that 
beautiful, proud bearing that seems part of the 
pheasant's heritage from the gorgeous East. 

And he was only just in time. 

The stoat that had come up behind him, unseen, 
turned on its heels as it charged, changing its mind 
at the last moment, as if it saw he saw, and was gone 
again before you could click a finger, diving superbly 
back into long grass. 

They were following him, then, those little hounds of 
death; tracking him; running him down. And why? 
He did not know, perhaps, yet — maybe he did. Blood 
is a dangerous thing to have on you in the wild : — a 
flaming signal of distress for eye and nose to detect — 
and they are not often rescuers who hurry to the scene. 



310 THE DAY 

He had blood on his back, that cock-pheasant, and just 
every now and then a single bright drop fell by the 
way. The .22-bore bullet had only grazed him. 'Twas 
nothing — but it bled more than you would expect. 
And that explained it. The tracking stoats thought he 
was wounded. 

But even then the old cock-pheasant would not rise. 

The firing in the covert had risen suddenly to a fierce 
crescendo, breaking out afresh from another quarter. 
Here, however, was silence — the absolute, deadly 
silence in which all the weasel tribe hunt. But they 
were there, though he could not see them. He knew 
that, invisible even in the sunlight — they were closing 
in, tracking him fast, those stoats. 

Then he ran. He ran not so much for his life, but 
for the right to keep on the ground. If the worst came 
to the worst, he could always fly; but he would do any- 
thing rather than that. 

He turned and ran away from the woods — raced like 
a fowl, but quicker, lower, much harder to see. A 
sudden gleam of bright-chestnut fur dead ahead, how- 
ever, stopped him, and he turned back, keeping always 
to the hedge — towards the covert. He could hear no 
sound around him, only the burst and the bang of the 
guns in the woods, and lie might have been alone; but 
directly he came to another hedge, and swung down 
to it at right angles, a furry tail with a paint-brush 
tip, vanishing round a holly-stem, fetching him up all 
standing. They were there, too, those stoats. He 
seemed to be surrounded on all sides save one, and that 
the one towards the woods. So he swung back into 
his original path. 

Then, very soon, as he ran up the hedge-ditch, it 
seemed to him as if the dead leaves collected there were 



THE DAY 311 

beginning to whisper behind him. But there was no 
wind to move them. Moreover, it grew closer, till it 
seemed at his very tail, that whisper of dead leaves. 

Then, in a flash, he had stopped, spun about like a 
top, and struck with his spurs twice — whack, whack 
— more than instantly, and a long, low, brown body 
close behind him, that had risen as he turned, so that its 
spotlessly clean shirt-front offered him a fine mark, 
went over sideways — with a grunt and all the wind 
knocked out of it, as well as an inch-and-a-half gash to 
remember friend pheasant by. That was one stoat ; 
but it was not alone. He had a vision of chestnut forms 
sliding and rippling in and out of the shadows and the 
long copper gleams of the westering sun. 

As he turned again, and the whispering began once 
more behind, the firing in front broke out afresh, and 
much nearer. Still he would not rise, however. It 
was this fact, probably, which kept the stoat-pack at 
his heels. They seemed convinced that he was badly 
wounded and unable to fly. 

Then came the road. He was on it before he knew. 
There was the wedge-shaped, low-browed head of a 
stoat racing up along one side of him, with murder 
plainly written in the gleam of its beady eyes ; there 
was the hot breath of another beating on his opposite 
flank; there was one with feet out and all brakes on, 
tr}nng its best to pull out one of the feathers of his long 
and beautiful tail ; and — there was the road dead 
ahead. 

It was one of three — the road, the air, or death 
where he was. He chose the road, and crossed, like a 
hunted cat crossing a back-yard. His feet seemed 
scarcely to touch the dust as he negotiated the open, 
yet he had time to take in a fact or two. One was that 



312 THE DAY 

the stoats had stopped — a little bunch of peering 
heads on a group of craning necks on the edge of the 
ditch behind him. Another was that several people and 
a motor-car were standing still in the road quite close, 
watching the shooting. I don't think any of them 
saw him, but he felt as if all of them did. 

Arrived in the hedge on the far side of the road, he 
clapped down, panting. The hedge ran along the road. 
On the other side of it was the grass of the park-land, 
stretching away two hundred yards or so to the edge of 
the covert, which came down to a point here. He could 
hear the tapping of sticks in the covert — beaters' 
sticks. He could hear an occasional shout. Men in 
tweeds stood motionless on the edge of the covert, and 
suddenly moved. 

Then came the infernal crash of the guns again, and 
he saw a hen-pheasant pitch sickeningly on her head 
from a height, and a cock-pheasant, flaming like a 
rocket in the sinking sun, run the gauntlet of four shots, 
only to turn over and slide down at a fifth. 

Then — and then, he jumped. 

Something had pushed past him. In the din he had 
not heard it. He turned as he crouched, and saw that 
it was a hen-pheasant, with blood on her breast and one 
wing trailing alongside. And in the same instant he 
was aware of a man — an under-keeper — crackling 
about in the hedge only ten yards away, looking for 
that hen-pheasant. 

And the unwounded old cock, crouching almost till 
he looked like a tortoise, followed the blundering, stag- 
gering, wounded hen. It was the only thing he dared do. 

It was a strange creep, and an erratic one, with many 
stops, those two hunted ones took together, meeting, so 
strangely, too — not for the first time, since she had 



THE DAY 313 

been one of his wives in the dim peaceful past — with 
the guns thundering away so close, and their sons and 
their daughters being slain almost all around them. 
They had, however, little time to think about it, for 
they came, after about twenty yards, to a gap spanned 
by barbed wire, and they stopped, the cock about a 
foot behind the hen's tail, in cover scarcely enough to 
hide them. 

But that was not all. Two men in fawn overcoats 
stood in the road by the gap, looking through it at the 
shooting; and a boy with a bicycle stood close to them, 
interested in the same thing. 

It was the boy with the bicycle that did it ; or, 
rather, it was the unhappy hen-pheasant that made him. 
She, being in extremis, had made some noise among the 
stiff dead leaves. It was not much of a noise, but it 
caught the boy's young ear, and he bent forward to peer 
at the hedge. 

One of the men saw him, said something, to which the 
boy nodded, jumped down into the ditch, and thrusting 
in a long arm, began to feel with a purposeful hand. 
The hen-pheasant, whose nerves were already shattered 
to little pieces, struggled to get out of reach, and in a 
second had given the whole show away. 

But I like to think of what our cunning old cock- 
pheasant did then. He did nothing — absolutely noth- 
ing at all. Crouching as flat as an overturned saucer, 
just behind the hen-pheasant's tail, he remained stiller 
than a bunch of dead leaves, and far more silent. And 
this, mark you, when the hen-phesant was pulled out, 
frantically fluttering and helpless, and there and then 
had her neck wrung in front of his very eyes. That, 
my masters, needed a nerve, after all that he had gone 
through. What? 



3 H THE DAY 

The two men, seeming to think that they had got 
enough for one quiet walk, departed, not quickly, but 
without unnecessary delay. The man who had been 
looking for the hen-pheasant, and had seen nothing of 
what took place at the gap, gave it up, and went away 
over the grass to the shooters. The shooting ended 
with one last double shot, at one last old cock-pheasant 
driven reluctantly from the last bush of the covert ; the 
dogs were out, galloping all over the ground for the 
wounded and the slain ; the watchers in the road de- 
parted ; the shooters gradually merged into groups, and 
drew farther and farther away up the park; and the 
boy, who was shy, mounted his bicycle and rode off into 
the sad blue-gray of the gathering dusk. 

The big day was over, and the old cock-pheasant was 
alone with the melancholy song of a single robin, and a 
chaffinch calling " Chink ! " And the cold breath of the 
sunset wind, shuddering and sighing all to itself across 
the face of the empty scene, touched the feathers that 
were left by the hen-pheasant attached to thorns and 
twigs in her last struggle, so that they danced and 
wavered and flickered before the old cock's eyes, as a 
reminder of all that had been for them in the past — 
the past, which for him, but never for her, might be 
again. 

That night he roosted in the covert, as usual. 



THE END 



